4 months to free trapped miners

COPIAPO, Chile – Engineers reinforced a lifeline yesterday to 33 miners entombed deep inside a Chilean gold and copper mine, preparing to keep them supplied with food, water, medicine and communications during the four months it may take to carve a tunnel wide enough to pull them out.A team of doctors and psychiatric experts also arrived at the remote mine, implementing a plan to maintain the miners’ sanity as well.“We need to urgently establish what psychological situation they are in. They need to understand what we know up here at the surface, that it will take many weeks for them to reach the light,” Health Minister Jaime Manalich explained.Engineers worked through the night to reinforce the six-inch (15 cm) -wide bore-hole that broke through to the miners’ refuge on Sunday, more than 2 257 feet (688 metres) below the surface. Using a long hose, they coated the walls with a metallic gel to decrease the risk of more rock falls in the unstable mine and make it easier to pass material in capsules nicknamed “palomas” or doves.The first capsules – which take about an hour to descend from the surface – will include water and food in the form of a high-energy glucose gel to miners who have almost certainly lost significant weight since they were trapped with limited food supplies on August 5.Also being sent down are questionnaires to determine each miners’ condition, along with medicines and small microphones to enable them to speak with their families during their long wait. Rescue leader Andre Sougarret said the communications equipment could begin working within hours, and that officials were organising the families into small groups to make their talks as orderly as possible.An enormous machine with diamond-tipped drills capable of carving a person-sized tunnel through solid rock at a velocity of 20 metres a day was on its way yesterday to the San Jose gold and copper mine outside Copiapo in north-central Chile. (AP)