San Juan de Sabinas, Mexico – More than three days of backbreaking labor brought rescuers close to the site where two of 65 trapped coal miners are believed to be located, a federal official said Wednesday.
Whether the two men are dead or alive could provide a clue to the fate of workers trapped deeper inside the Pasta de Conchos mine, Labor Secretary Francisco Salazar said.
“These two people will give us an indication of what it is that could have happened,” Salazar told the Televisa television network Wednesday morning.
Salazar said the two conveyor-belt operators are believed to be less than 54 yards past a wall of debris that rescuers have been trying to break through since early Tuesday. The miners were trapped by an underground gas explosion Sunday.
Mine administrator Ruben Escudero told family members that workers had been able to pump additional fresh air into the mine, possibly allowing rescuers to shed their oxygen tanks and work faster without the extra weight.
Because of fears that machinery could spark explosions, rescuers wearing gas masks and tanks have had to move tons of fallen dirt, rock, wood and metal with picks and shovels.
They got through a wall of debris, only to encounter another wall 600 yards inside the tunnel early Tuesday. While the two conveyor-belt operators may be just beyond the second wall, most of the others are thought to be as far as 3 miles from the mine’s entrance.
Anguished family members were camping outside the mine gates in the freezing cold on the patch of scrub desert in the state of Coahuila, about 85 miles southwest of Eagle Pass, Texas.
“What we want to know is when they are going to find our family members,” said Miguel Arteaga, whose 39-year-old brother, Juan Raul Arteaga, is in the mine. “I’m not leaving here without my brother.”
Mine operators have said each of the 65 men was carrying a tank with six hours of oxygen supply.
