CHILEAN MINE RESCUE: THE ACCIDENT, ‘THE 33’ TODAY, THE FUTURE OF THEIR STORY, AND OUR REACTION
| Jurisdiction | Derecho Internacional |
(Apr 2013)
CHILEAN MINE RESCUE: THE ACCIDENT, 'THE 33' TODAY, THE FUTURE OF THEIR STORY, AND OUR REACTION
Partner, Carey y Cía
Santiago, Chile
Francisco Corona
Associate, Carey y Cía
Santiago, Chile
RAFAEL VERGARA is partner and head of Carey y Cía.'s Natural Resources, Energy and Environment Group. His practice focuses on natural resources, mining, water rights, energy, environment, surface lands, project financing, corporate/commercial, municipal and planning, health and medicines. Since 1996, Mr. Vergara has been Professor of Mining Law at the Universidad de Chile, and from 2003 at the Universidad de Los Andes. He has given special courses on mining law organized by the Judiciary Academy of Chile, for judges and members of the Courts of Appeals. He has also presented papers on Chilean energy and natural resources regulations at numerous meetings, both in Chile and abroad. Currently he is member of the panel of the Arbitration Center of the Santiago Chamber of Commerce. He is member of the Board of the Chilean Bar Association, of the legal committee of the National Mining Association (SONAMI), of the Inter-Pacific Bar Association, of the International Bar Association, of the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation, and of the informal association Abogados Mineros Latinoamericanos (AMLA). Mr. Vergara studied law at the Universidad de Chile, and was admitted to the Bar in 1987. He was a participant in the 1993 course of the Academy of American and International Law of the Southwestern Legal Foundation in Dallas, Texas, USA and in the 1997 Program of Instruction for Lawyers of the Harvard University Law School. He is fluent in Spanish and English.
FRANCISCO CORONA is a member of Carey y Cia.'s Natural Resources, Energy and Environment Group. His practice focuses on natural resources, mining, energy and environment. During 2003, Mr. Corona worked at Duke Energy Field Services, Denver, Colorado, USA. Since 2004, he is an Assistant Professor of Mining Law at the Universidad de Chile School of Law, and since 2006 he teaches Environmental Law at the Universidad Nacional Andrés Bello School of Law. Mr. Corona studied law at the Universidad de Chile and was admitted to the Bar in 2001. In 2003 he obtained a Master in Laws Degree (L.L.M.) in Natural Resources and Environmental Law and Policy from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Denver, Colorado, USA, with a specialization in mining and energy. He is fluent in Spanish and English.
Introduction
More than two years ago, on August 5, 2010, the world witnessed events at the 700-meter-deep (2,300 ft) San Jose Mine in the Atacama Desert of Chile, where a collapse trapped 33 miners. This huge undertaking, led by the Chilean Ministry of Mines, resulted in a dramatically successful rescue, after 69 days. This paper will summarize some details of the rescue, including organization and coordination of work teams and decision making, lessons learned, and second, what happened after the accident under three perspectives: as a nation, to the 33 miners and as a country.
The San Jose Mine, that produced copper and gold, is about 45 kilometers (28 mi) north of the city of Copiapó and app. 800 kilometers (500 mi) north of the Chilean capital, Santiago.
The total cost of the rescue operation was estimated at US$20 million, a third of which was financed with private donations and the rest came from the state-owned mining corporation Codelco and from the Chilean government itself. The State of Chile reached a settlement for USD$ 5 million with San Esteban Mining Company.
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The San Jose Mine, which had been in operation for nearly 100 years and had a long history of accidents, was owned by the San Esteban Mining Company. A record of eight workers had died there between years 2004 and 2010, and the company had received in the past 42 fines for breaching safety regulations. In fact, the San Jose mine was shut down in 2007 when relatives of a miner who had died in an accident sued company executives, but was reopened in 2008 despite failing to comply with all regulations, a matter which is still under investigation.
The accident
The cave-in occurred on August 5, 2010 at 14:00 CLT. Once the dust settled, the mine superintendent dispatched a team down the mine, and they soon discovered an impenetrable rock wall. Still unsure of the dimensions of the caving, the mine superintendent called the regional secretary of mining for the government at 6pm, informing him of the accident. The regional secretary of mining alerted the former undersecretary of mining in Santiago, Pablo Wagner, who in turn sent a text message to the ex-Mining Minister Laurence Golborne -nowadays presidential pre-candidate-who was on a state visit in Ecuador with President Sebastián Piñera. "Golborne had recently installed a procedure by which mine operators were required to notify national authorities immediately after an accident. Thus he learned the gravity of the disaster a few hours after its occurrence".1 Golborne called Wagner back and instructed him to go immediately to the mine along with Labor Minister Camila Merino. Given the late time, he decided to talk to President Piñera the next day, August 6.
After talking to the President, Golborne left immediately for Chile and arrived to the site to lead the rescue efforts, under a special request from President Piñera, on August 7. "With plenty of business experience but no background in mining and just four months in government office, Golborne took charge of one of the most widely watched disaster recovery efforts in world history".2
The rescue teams
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Initially, the rescue team was formed by volunteers from other mines in the region since the San José mine did not have its own rescue squad. Unofficially, the rescue supervisor from another nearby mine had taken charge of the rescue. Upon arrival, Golborne was briefed about the rescue efforts, met the families and held a meeting organized by the Intendente de Atacama, the highest governmental authority in the region with the police force, the local representative of Chile's Emergency Office, rescue team leaders, one of the owners of the mine, the top Chilean Army officer in the region, Policía de Investigaciones de Chile and others. The discussion was marked by confusion and on the spot Golborne decided that he had to lead the rescue efforts personally.
Meanwhile, the rescuers attempted to bypass the rock fall at the main entryway through alternative passages, but all routes were blocked by fallen rock. A second collapse occurred at the mine on August 7 while rescuers were trying to access the mine through a ventilation shaft, using heavy machinery. Because of this reason the government, leaded by President Piñera, decided to take the control of the operation. In the following days, the inner circle of the rescue team was formed: the leadership was left to Golborne and three key lieutenants: André Sougarret, one of the operating managers of El Teniente (a huge underground Codelco mine), who oversaw the technical team at the site; René Aguilar, a psychologist with excellent communicational skills who is professional risk management director of El Teniente Mine, who assisted Sougarret in designing the rescue strategy; and Cristián Barra, cabinet chief for the Interior Ministry, who managed relations with the relatives and the government.
The experts, under Golborne's leadership, decided that percussion drills would be used to make eight exploratory boreholes of about 16 centimeters (6.3 in) wide. The rescue effort was extremely complicated because the owners of the San Jose Mine had out-of-date maps of the mine shafts and several boreholes drifted off-target because of the depth that needed to be reached and the hard rock of the area.
To communicate the rescue's progress in the best possible way, Golborne was chosen as official spokesman, while André Sougarret explained the technical details. Also, a flash poll determined that if the rescue failed, it wouldn't mean a high political cost to President Piñera due to the compromise he had assumed with the accident.
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To get assistance from other countries with large mining experience, President Piñera called the ambassadors of Chile in South Africa, Australia, Canada, Peru and the US requesting technical assistance. Their response was immediate and Golborne designated Fidel Baez, another Codelco engineer, to evaluate which was the best technical proposal.
The camp Hope
In the meantime, Golborne met the families every two hours and learned of the increasing demands from the relatives for better living conditions. A tent city called Campamento Esperanza (camp Hope) had sprung up in the mine site. At the beginning, the miners' relatives gathered at the mine entrance and slept in cars as they waited on the rescue operation's progress. But slowly friends started to bring tents and other camping supplies for shelter from the harsh desert climate.
At Golborne's request, the regional government created a more private area for the families to avoid their constant exposure to the press, a second area for the hundreds of journalist and producers that were arriving to the site was created and a special camp for the rescue team was formed. The authorities, under the joint leadership of the Interior Ministry and the Intendenda de Atacama, provided trucks with water, installed chemical toilets, sanitary facilities, a canteen area and fitted a big tent as dining room with community pots for the more than three hundred people that were sleeping in Campamento Esperanza. The local government established shuttle bus stops, a school house and children zones were built and volunteers helped to feed the families. Security was also addressed, thus police and soldiers were brought to maintain order and security.
Due to...
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