World

Chile to start freeing miners on Tuesday night

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-10-12 09:56

Members of the rescue team hoist up the capsule with a weight inside from the shaft on one of the final tests before using it to lift the 33 miners to safety, in Copiapo in this frame grab from a government handout video taken Oct 11, 2010. [Photo/Agencies]

COPIAPO - Rescuers successfully tested a capsule to hoist Chile's 33 trapped miners to freedom and aim to start evacuating them on Tuesday night after a two-month ordeal that has gripped the world's imagination.

The specially designed bullet-shaped cage was lowered almost the entire length of the escape shaft without a hitch, Mining Minister Laurence Golborne told reporters.

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Once the evacuations start, at midnight on Tuesday (0300 GMT Wednesday), it will take 48 hours to hoist the men up from inside the caved-in mine half a mile underground, he said.

Four rescuers will be lowered to help the miners prepare to return to the surface from the darkness of the tunnel they have been trapped in since the August 5 collapse at the gold and copper mine in the Atacama desert.

"I'm not nervous yet but I will be big-time when it's my turn (to come up)," 19-year-old Jimmy Sanches, the youngest miner, wrote in a letter sent up on Monday. "When I get out I want to see my daughter and shout to the four winds."

His sister-in-law Roxana Avalos said the family was preparing a party for him. "Around 500 people are coming," she said.

Rescue workers finished reinforcing the escape shaft on Monday morning. Engineers decided to line only part of the narrow, nearly 2,050 foot-long (625-metre) shaft with metal tubes, aiming to avoid any last-minute disaster.

Rescuers installed the tubes to diminish the risk of rocks breaking off the walls of the drill shaft and blocking the exit of the capsule, dubbed the "Phoenix" after the mythical bird reborn from its ashes.

"The results of the tests have been very promising, very positive," Golborne told reporters at the mine. "The capsule handles well inside the duct and adapts well both inside the metal tubes and the rock."

President Sebastian Pinera, who has ordered a revamp of mine safety regulations in the wake of the accident, plans to visit the mine on Tuesday. One of the 33 miners is a Bolivian national and Bolivian President Evo Morales has vowed to visit the mine for his rescue.

"It will be a true rebirth, not just for the 33 miners but also for the spirit of unity, strength, faith and hope they have shown our country and the world," Pinera said during a visit to Ecuador on Monday.