Chile Forum

Chilean Miner’s Wife, Mistress Waiting Together for Him to Surface

.... The Post reports today that while waiting for trapped miner Yonni Barrios, his wife Marta Salinas made an unpleasant discovery: Barrios's mistress, Susanna Valanzuela, was also hanging around the mine site waiting to see her man, the same man

Meanwhile, the Chilean website elamerica.cl in the 30 August page, reported that it was Valenzuela and not Salinas who was miner Barrios' wife. Other reports in Chile also have it either way. El Mercurio claimed that Valenzuela was the amante. And so it goes.

Susana Valenzuela Rojas, esposa del minero Jhonny Barrios quien hoy en el fondo de esta mina hace de paramédico apoyando el trabajo de los profesionales en la superficie. ...

Other article " At least five wives have been forced to come face to face with mistresses whose existence was kept from them by their husbands, who have been trapped more than 2,300ft below since a cave in on August 5. "

Oh, how very chileno, in all its aspects.

What kind of move? A soap, a telenovela. The title? "Cuento de Minas." Ja ja.

We have not updated this for a while though it remains on almost everyone's mind here in Chile: the progress on the rescue of the 33 trapped miners. El Mercurio and the other media are keeping up to date but not everyone reads enough Spanish to follow the details.

AP and Fox News in the US have been doing a decent job at translating the reports from Chile. Fox published a summary yesterday: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/09/25 ... ly-august/

Of particular interest here is the description and photo of the first of the three rescue cages. The brother of one of the miners is shown inside one of these cages in a photo op.

Quoting from the article:

The capsule is nearly 10 feet tall on the outside. Inside, the space is 6¼ feet high and about 21 inches across.

The bottom of the capsule holds three tanks of compressed air — 40 percent oxygen and 60 percent nitrogen, Health Minister Jaime Manalich said. He said that was enough for about 90 minutes of breathing, more than the 15 to 20 minutes that the journey to the surface is expected to take.

A microphone inside will allow each miner to stay in touch with those inside and outside the mine while being pulled up, Manalich said.

He added that in an emergency, such as the capsule getting jammed in the rescue hole, the bottom can be opened with levers inside so the miner can be lowered back down by cable.


Edit: CNN also has an article and other foto http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/ ... tml?hpt=T2
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Meanwhile there are three drilling plans in operation.

Plan B (Schramm T 130 platform) had a setback yesterday from a broken part and is back on line. It has done 192 of the required 620 metres with the full size bore hole needed to use the rescue cage.

Plan A (the Raise Borer rig) which has to penetrate 703 metres to reach the miners' refuge, has reached 465 metros at the pilot hole diametre only. It will then need to enlarge the pilot hole.

Plan C is the oil drill rig "RIG 421" which is being used to reach a shallower point in the mine, at a point along the access ramp at a depth of 597 metres. As of yesterday that rig has completed 78 metres at the full required rescue cage diametre.

Saludos

I checked the Precision Drilling website and as of 8:00 am this morning "Plan C" was at 104m with the full bore.

I read some where that under normal oil field conditions where their target is 40m x 40m they can drill 300m a day. But since they have a 4m x 4m target they have to take it a bit slower but once they get closer they can start cranking up the speed.

Now that all the surface work and cementing is done I wouldn't be surprised if they can't hit their target in about 2 weeks.

Recent progress report on the mine rescue effort, from El Mercurio:

Plan B ... 330 of the 620 metres with the full size bore hole needed to use the rescue cage. More than half-way as of yesterday.

Plan A ... has done 508 of 703 metres but this is only a pilot-hole diametre.

Plan C ... 220 metres of required 597 metres, done at full cage diametre.

A non-event, but perhaps worth mentioning.

Let's hope it all goes to plan:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... night.html

We are almost there. Looks like sometime in the next week.

It was worth getting up early to see the latest. At 0805 this morning the T130 drill, the Plan B effort from Pennsylvania, reached the roof of the mine and by news accounts the miners were understandably going nuts.

It isn't over til it's over. Or as the CL mining secretary Laurence Golborne more elegantly put it, "todavía queda bastante camino por hacer, mucho por recorrer y precauciones que tomar....Todavía no hemos rescatado a nadie."

Now that they have reached the miners, let us all pray that they can speedily and safely returned to their families - after this amount of time in the dire situation, they will need support and understanding as they return to the surface and the Sun. Bless all that have worked so hard to make this rescue possible. Diane

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/no ... k-marathon

impressive!