The coal mine collapsed 10 days ago. The relatives of the miners, who number 10, said they were “desperate because of the slowness of the rescue maneuvers.”
The relatives of the 10 miners who remain trapped in a coal mine that collapsed 10 days ago in the state of Coahuila, north of Mexicoasked this Saturday for help and intervention of foreign rescuers and criticized the actions of the Mexican specialists.
At a press conference on the outskirts of the area where the rescue work is being carried out, the relatives said they were “desperate due to the slowness of the rescue maneuvers” that on Friday they entered a pause after an intense rain that caused a new flood and that delayed the entry of the rescuers to the well of the El Pinabete mine, located in the municipality of Sabinas, Coahuila.
“We did not want to give information or anything, because in a certain way we wanted to give them (authorities) their place to help us quickly, but we we are tired (from so many days) and we decided to leave because we already need our relatives,” said Martha María Huerta, wife of one of the miners.
“If they can’t, we want help from somewhere else (foreign)”expressed another of the wives of the miners who appeared before the media while demanding a new presentation from the president of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
A son of one of the miners, Claudio Mireles, said that the rescuers from the Ministry of National Defense (Sedena) work slowly and do not allow the help of other miner colleagues who, he said, know the area of the wells better.
In addition, he expressed that the families “are already very worn out” because it has been 10 days since the collapse of the mine and “they only tell them lies, For me they are just lies and there is no progress.
Before the media, the relatives demanded the intervention of specialists from abroad or, in a better case, that they allow the miners’ companions to enter the area of the collapse, since, they pointed out, they are the ones who know the wells best.
On Friday, the Sedena rescuers entered the collapsed mine several times but ran into more objects obstructing the entrance and that they dedicated themselves to removing.
The removal of these obstacles delayed the entry of the specialists to well 2, which collapsed at 1:35 p.m. local time (6:35 p.m. GMT) on August 3, while in the afternoon-night, intense rain in the municipality of Sabinas made it difficult the works in the area.
The Government of the state of Coahuila explained that in order to guarantee safety in the works, it was decided to gas measurements every half hour by engineers and rescuers, which will allow to determine the moment in which the conditions to carry out the descents are available.
the landslide revived the controversy in Mexico for the actions of mining companies in the coal region, where more than 100 deaths of people dedicated to mining have been recorded, according to the Pasta de Conchos Family, which brings together relatives of those killed in the 2006 collapse in the mine of that name.
On Thursday, the Attorney General of the Republic (FGR) of Mexico announced that it will charge the owner of the collapsed mine with illegal exploitation and a day later, President López Obrador justified the slow pace of the rescue because “The wells had a water depth of approximately 30 meters, so the water level has been lowering, but there is still a long way to go.”