A estimated 1 billion people watched live on TV as 33 miners, trapped underground were brought to the surface one by one after 69 days from the Copiapó mine in northern Chile in 2010.

A cave-in on the 5th August had left 33 men five miles from the entrance and they had retreated to a shelter. On the 22nd August an exploratory bore found the miners location and the miners were able to attach a note to the drill "All 33 of us are fine in the shelter". A rescue shaft was then drilled and the miners extracted via a specially made rescue capsule to the surface.

The mine is owned by the San Esteban Mining Company, a company notorious for operating unsafe mines. According to an official with the non-profit Chilean Safety Association, (Spanish: Asociación Chilena de Seguridad, also known as ACHS) eight workers died at the San José site between 1998 and 2010 while CMSE was fined 42 times between 2004 and 2010 for breaching safety regulations. The mine was shut down temporarily in 2007 when relatives of a miner killed in an accident sued the company; but the mine reopened in 2008 despite non-compliance with regulations. Due to budget constraints there were only three inspectors for the Atacama Region's 884 mines during the period leading up to the most recent collapse.

Prior to the accident, CMSE had ignored warnings over unsafe working conditions in its mines. According to Javier Castillo, secretary of the trade union that represents San José's miners, the company's management operates "without listening to the voice of the workers when they say that there is danger or risk". "Nobody listens to us. Then they say we're right. If they had believed the workers, we would not be lamenting this now", said Gerardo Núñez, head of the union at a nearby Candelaria Norte mine.

The collapse occurred at 14:00 CLT on 5 August 2010. Access to the depths of the mine was by a long helical roadway. One man, an ore-truck driver, was able to get out, but a group of 33 men were trapped deep inside. A thick dust cloud caused by the rock fall blinded the miners for as much as six hours.

Initially, the trapped miners tried to escape through ventilation shafts, but the ladders required by safety codes were missing.

Luis Urzúa, the duty shift supervisor, gathered his men in a room called a "refuge" and organized them and their resources. Teams were sent out to assess the vicinity.

The trapped miners' emergency shelter had an area of 50 square meters (540 sq ft) with two long benches, but ventilation problems had led them to move out into a tunnel. In addition to the shelter, they had access to some 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) of open tunnels in which they could move around and get some exercise or privacy.[24] Food supplies were severely limited and each of the men had lost an average of 8 kilograms (18 lb) by the time they were discovered. Although the emergency supplies stocked in the shelter were intended to last only two or three days, through careful rationing, the men made their meager resources last for two weeks, only running out just before they were discovered

Previous geological instability at the old mine and a long record of safety violations for the mine's owners, San Esteban Mining Company, had resulted in a series of fines and accidents, including eight deaths, during the dozen years leading up to this accident. Following three years of work, lawsuits and investigations into the collapse concluded in August 2013 with no charges filed.

President of Chile Sebastian Piñera would use the public opinion boost from this to pass anti-"terrorism" laws that would clasify the indigenous Mapuche as terrorists

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  • CantaloupeAss [comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I want to be better at calmly and empathetically discussing my ideology with people in my life who don't already agree with it.

    But I look at left-wing ideology as an extension of basic human empathy, and so when people argue against it I just get so fucking angry at them and it always devolves into an argument.

    My solution so far has just been to cut out all non-leftists from my life, at least those who show no interest or affiliation with the ideology. Unfortunately at times this has included family.

    Have I gone too far? Or.... have I not gone far enough? :meow-tankie:

    • ElGosso [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Real life isn't the internet and there is a real cost to alienating the people around you. There's no point jumping on a grenade for China or trying to convince people that Ukraine is riddled with Nazis or whatever.