The miners' health conditions and measurable parameters are stable, the medical team said. ( CESAR JIMENEZ )
More than 70 national and international mining experts are working on rescuing the miners trapped in a cave-in at the Cerro de Maimón mine in Monseñor Nouel.
In the press conference offered by Cormidom, they informed that the medical personnel of the Armed Forces hospital, Ramón de Lara, where they would be taken after their rescue for their health evaluation, are already in the mine.
“The first stage was to establish contact and ensure a lifeline, the second will be to rescue them and that is what we are doing,” said Elizabeth Mena, vice-president of the mining company.
Mine designers have been involved in the rescue plan, suggesting the best way to access the tunnel where the miners are.
The machine that perforates the earth horizontally to reach and rescue them has advanced more than 50 % since they started working on it. They have reached 39.5 meters out of a total of 74.
This Sunday, several pieces of equipment sent by Canada will arrive in the country by air, including a Cubex Model 6200 drill, which weighs more than 25,000 pounds with its mast, and a Cubex R-110 Booster, 8,500-pound equipment reinforcement, tool boxes, rod racks, transformers, and miscellaneous material make up the rest of the equipment.
Health conditions and their measurable parameters are stable, said the medical team.
Carlos Yepez Ospina (Colombian) and Gregory Alexander Méndez (Dominican) receive a rigorous follow-up to their state of health; twice a day, the doctors, psychologists, and nutritionists communicate via radio and interrogate them by way of evaluation and thus know their general state of health.
“We ask them if they have any dermatological (skin) condition, any infection or eye alteration, we take samples of their oxygen saturation, heart rate and respiratory rate, and today we take urine samples to analyze how they respond to the treatments applied,” informed the mining company’s doctor, Syed Musaffar Hasan.
The diet provided was established by nutritionist Jimmy Barranco Ventura, Cedimat’s expert.
Carlos receives 2,300 calories and Gregory 2,000; of these calories, 500 are in supplements and the rest in exceptional canned food, one every 12 hours, to reduce muscle degradation known as Sarcopenia (loss of muscle mass due to a sedentary lifestyle).
They are also provided with multivitamins, including vitamins D and C, electrolytes, and water to rehydrate them due to their humid and sweaty conditions.
The mining director described the cave-in space at a depth of more than 100 meters, where they have been since last Sunday after a rockslide in gallery 265.
The space where the miners are located is approximately 375 square meters; according to Rolando Muñoz, director of Mining, the area is 61 meters long, “it is a quite wide gallery, the height is six meters and the width is 6.5 meters, bigger than the house of many of us”, said the official.
He added that, within that area, they could handle emergent living situations, “obviously it is not the most comfortable, but they are not saturated, and they can do their physiological needs in an area that we have explained to them.”
He pointed out that subway mining is recent in the country, so even the Dominican employees, despite receiving induction training, are not experts; in the case of Carlos, the Colombian said that coming from Colombia, there is more knowledge about subway mines.
President’s visit
The President of the Republic, Luis Abinader, paid a visit to the rescue operations center last Thursday and invited them to the National Palace when they were rescued.
On Friday, Héctor Acosta, senator of Monseñor Nouel province and an artist, “El Torito,” sang to the miners via radio communication to raise their spirits.