Ten Mexican miners remain trapped in coal mine after three rescued
Reuters | August 4, 2022 

Hardhat in a mine. (Image from RawPixel, CC0).

Rescuers in Mexico, including dozens of soldiers, were working desperately on Wednesday to reach ten miners trapped in a flooded coal mine following the collapse of an inner wall, the ministry handling the disaster said.


Three miners had been rescued and hospitalized, the Security and Citizen Protection Ministry said in an update on the rescue efforts at the mine in the Sabinas municipality of the northern state of Coahuila.

Television footage showed family members outside the mine clamoring for information on the missing men.

“I hope we find them safe,” Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said earlier on Twitter. Lopez Obrador had said nine miners were likely to be trapped, but authorities revised the number later.

Some 92 soldiers were working at the scene, as well as specialists and rescue dogs, the president said.

The Labor Ministry said it had not received any complaints about safety at the mine, which began operations in January.

(By Carolina Pulice, Adriana Barrera and Valentine Hilaire; Editing by Brendan O’Boyle, Sandra Maler and Simon Cameron-Moore)

Day after Mexico mine collapse, families fret over 10 trapped miners

Reuters | August 4, 2022 | 

Stock image.

Families grew increasingly anxious on Thursday as they awaited word from rescue teams tasked with descending a flooded coal mine in northern Mexico to rescue 10 workers nearly 24 hours after an accident confined the crew deep underground.


The miners became trapped on Wednesday after their excavation work caused a tunnel wall to collapse, triggering flooding in three wells.

Erika Escobedo, the wife of one of the trapped miners, 29-year-old Hugo Tijerina, told Reuters she spent all night watching rescue efforts at the site in the northern border state of Coahuila.

“They say the water is rising,” she said, describing bigger water extraction pumps she saw hauled to the site.

Mexico’s Civil Protection agency did not immediately respond when asked about efforts to pump out the water, and if levels were rising.

Its director, Laura Velazquez, said earlier on Thursday that time was everything, and several hundred officials were “working day and night” to assist with the rescue.

Six divers from the Mexican Special Forces arrived at the site on Thursday morning to help the rescue effort along with search dogs, according to Agustin Radilla, a top military official. The mine’s wells, each 60 meters deep, were more than half flooded, Radilla added.

Families keeping vigil remained on edge.

“I want my husband to come out all right,” said Escobedo, her voice breaking in a phone interview from the site, as she watched rescuers bore another tunnel to try to reach the miners.

For now, she has told her three children not to worry about their father and that he will come home okay.

Five other miners escaped the accident. They all received medical treatment, and two have been discharged from hospital.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said investigations into those responsible for the mine’s safety will come only after the rescue effort.

“With all my soul, I want us to rescue the miners,” he said at a news conference. The mine opened in January and had no “record of complaints for any type of abnormality,” the Labor Ministry reported yesterday.

Still Elizabeth Vielma, the mother of three men who work at the site but were not involved in Wednesday’s accident, said she worried about conditions there.

“They just give them the drills and send them down,” she said.

(By Lizbeth Diaz, Kylie Madry and Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Barbara Lewis and Marla Dickerson)

Mexican president promises non-stop effort to save 10 trapped miners

Reuters | August 4, 2022 | 

Andrés Manuel López Obrador. (Image courtesy of Mexican President’s Office.)

Rescue teams will work non-stop to free 10 miners trapped in a flooded coal mine in Mexico’s northern border state of Coahuila, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Thursday.


The miners became trapped on Wednesday after three wells at the mine overflowed, causing an inner wall to collapse.

“With all my soul, I want us to rescue the miners,” Lopez Obrador told a regular news conference.

Five others were able to escape received medical treatment, and two of them have been discharged from a public clinic, Laura Velazquez, head of Mexico’s civil protection agency, said.

Several hundred local and federal officials were responding to the accident, according to authorities, underscoring a “firm commitment” to rescuing the trapped miners, which requires pumping wells to send rescue teams down to the mines.

“We haven’t slept, we’re working day and night … Time is key,” she said in a video at the president’s news conference.

Lopez Obrador added investigations into those responsible for the mine’s safety would come only after the rescue effort.

“We’ll leave all of that for later … we’re going to try to save the miners,” he said.

According to the Labor Ministry, the mine, which began operations in January, had no existing safety complaints.

In one of Mexico’s worst mining disasters, at a coal mine in Coahuila in 2006, 65 men were killed with only two bodies ever recovered. Lopez Obrador has vowed to find the bodies of the other victims. The technically complex work is expected to last through 2024.

(By Kylie Madry, Daina Beth Solomon, Ana Isabel Martinez and Barbara Lewis)