Officials prefer to wait for the water level to drop another 1.5 meters before sending “divers and rescuers” into the flooded galleries, the country’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters yesterday.
Ten workers remain trapped for seven days in a flooded coal mine in the state of Coahuila, Mexico. The government announced yesterday that the drop in the water level, thanks to the non-stop effort to pump it out, gives rise to hopes that divers will be able to enter today or tomorrow Thursday to locate the missing.
Images from an underwater drone equipped with a camera yesterday Monday showed that obstacles and currents still make it too dangerous for divers to deploy in the depths of the Aguhita coal mine, said the national coordinator of Civil Protection, Laura Velazquez.
Officials prefer to wait for the water level to drop another 1.5 meters before sending “divers and rescuers” into the flooded galleries, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters on Tuesday.
Hundreds of rescue crew members, including divers from the armed forces, are participating in the operation to locate the miners. The relatives’ hopes that they will be found alive fade as time passes.
Efforts are focused on pumping out the water in the mine, at a depth of 60 meters.
According to authorities, the miners were performing excavation work when a groundwater well was drilled.
The state of Coahuila, the only coal-mining state in Mexico, has experienced a series of fatal mining accidents over the years. The worst was recorded on February 19, 2006, when 65 miners were killed due to a gas explosion in Pasta de Conchos.
RES-EMP
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