Rescuers Begin Drilling to Free Trapped Chilean Miners

(Aug. 31) -- Engineers in Chile have begun work on a rescue shaft to free 33 men stuck in a mine thousands of feet beneath the Atacama Desert.

A massive, 31-ton drill began to bore into the earth early Tuesday morning, three weeks after a landslide trapped the men inside the San Jose copper and gold mine Aug. 5 in Copiapo, a remote area in northern Chile.

Engineers plan to slowly increase the bit size on the drill until the hole is just large enough for the men to crawl through one by one, according to The Associated Press.

The rescue operation could take months and is already the longest-running ever. Government officials say the miners may not emerge from the shaft until Christmas. Engineers, mining experts and rescue crews have converged on the mine in an international effort to free the men.

Dave Feickert, director of KiaOra, a mine safety consulting group in New Zealand, said rescuers in Chile have the right tools for the job.

Rescuers begin drilling a new hole with their new Strata 950 excavator at the San Jose mine, Copiapo, Chile, August 30.

Ariel Marinkovic, AFP / Getty Images

Rescuers begin drilling a hole with a Strata 950 excavator at the San Jose mine in Copiapo, Chile, early Tuesday morning. The Australian-made excavator will first bore a 13-inch-wide pilot hole. This must then be doubled using a special drill bit to 26 inches -- wide enough to lower a rescue capsule down to pull the miners out.

"The drill operators have the best equipment available internationally," he told the AP. But Feickert said the process remains arduous. "This doesn't mean it will be easy. They are likely to run into some technical problems that may slow them down."

Even NASA has sent a team to help. The space agency says the experience of being trapped in a mine is somewhat similar to the experience of an astronaut, and has dispatched four experts to Chile to help the workers stay mentally and physically fit while they are underground.

"Environments may well be different, but human response -- both in physiology and behavior responses to emergencies -- is quite similar," NASA deputy chief medical officer Michael Duncan said last week. "So we think that some of the things we've learned in research or in operations can be applicable to the miners that are trapped underground."

As families of the miners wait for the rescue of their loved ones, fears over their economic security are intensifying. The Chilean government and its citizens are providing food for the families, but no one has stepped up to pay the workers' salaries since they became trapped Aug. 5. The company that owns the mine has warned that it may go bankrupt, and the government says it does not have the legal authority to pay the miners.

Blanca Rojas, whose brother Esteban is trapped in the mine, said she is worried about how the family will survive. "More than anything, we want Esteban out of the mine, but his family must eat," she told The Wall Street Journal. "People have been generous, but we wonder what happens when the September salary is due."

Monday, rescuers sent the first meals of solid food to the miners through a small hole 2,300 feet above the shelter where the men are trapped. The miners had been eating liquid energy packets, and for the first 17 days, relied on cans of stored tuna and a meager two-day supply of water as they waited for help from above.