San Juan de Sabinas, Mexico – Hopes of finding alive any of the 65 miners trapped in a coal mine since an explosion early Sunday are fading with the steady deterioration of the air quality underground, the mining company and rescue workers said here Thursday.
“Being realistic, we feel the conditions are very difficult,” Ruben Escudero, the manager of Industrial Minera Mexico, told a press conference outside the Pasta de Conchos facility in the northern Mexican border state of Coahuila.
Data brought back by the rescue unit that emerged from the mine around midday on Thursday – 4 1/2 days since the explosion – were not encouraging.
As the teams chip through the rubble and go deeper into the mine, they are encountering air with higher levels of methane and a lower oxygen content.
The latest readings show the atmosphere to be 5.5 percent methane and only 18.7 percent oxygen, significantly below the normal level of around 21 percent.
Speaking alongside mine manager Escudero, Mexican Labor Secretary Francisco Javier Salazar said that the U.S. specialists who traveled here to aid in the rescue effort are monitoring the air quality to safeguard the rescue workers.
Miner Abel Salazar, member of an emergency team from Coahuila civil defense, told EFE that chances are slim the trapped men remain alive.
“I don’t believe that a person who spends more than four days breathing with those levels of methane can survive,” he said.
He acknowledged that the miners are used to working in an atmosphere of 5 percent to 7 percent methane, “but always with air tanks,” which, in the case of the men inside Pasta de Conchos, would have long since been exhausted.
“I think that only a miracle will be able to save the miners who are trapped,” Salazar said.
Outside the mine, located about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from San Juan de Sabinas, many relatives of the trapped workers cling to the hope of seeing their loved ones again.
