Trapped miners only five days and 100m away from rescue

THE 33 miners trapped for two months half-a-mile underground in Chile could be reunited with their families as early this weekend after workers drilled towards the final few metres of a narrow rescue shaft.

Officials said they expected to reach the men today then planned to send down a video camera to confirm the walls of the shaft were strong enough to allow them to be pulled up.

"Everything is going well. I think they'll be getting out this Sunday or Monday," said Eugenio Eguiguren, vice-president of Geotec Boyles Brothers, the company drilling the 630-metre rescue tunnel at the copper and gold mine in northern Chile's Atacama region.

"(But] the deeper it gets, the more complicated it becomes," he added.

Originally, rescuers feared it could take until Christmas to free the men, who were forced to take refuge in a room of 50 square metres when an access tunnel collapsed on 5 August.

But progress on the drilling of Plan B, the closest of the three rescue tunnels, has been quicker than expected, with the giant T-130 drill working on the shaft boring through more than 50 metres of rock in little more than 16 hours by early yesterday.

It left about 100 metres still to go, which the company was hopeful of breaching overnight.

After breaking through, rescuers must then determine if the shaft's walls are firm enough not to collapse on the mansized bullet-shaped cage, the Phoenix, that will be lowered and raised more than 30 times to pluck them out one by one.

If the shaft walls are not firm enough, metal supports will need to be fixed in, delaying the project by up to five days.

Rene Aguilar, the rescue co-ordinator, told reporters his first choice would be to use the steel casing in any event, even though it might risk caving in parts of the tunnel already drilled.

Despite Mr Eguiguren's optimism, government officials said the final stages of the operation would not be rushed.

"They've been down there 61 days. If they are out in 70 or 80, that's much better than 120," mining minister, Laurence Golborne, said.

"There is a humanistic pressure to rescue people who are trapped 600 metres deep as soon as possible.Hopefully we will be able to do it in five days, which is the soonest possible."

He said the men had not been told how close they were to being rescued to avoid disappointment in case there was any delay.

Yesterday, large pieces of a giant crane that will be used to haul the men to safety continued to arrive at the rescue site in Copiapo, 500 miles north of Chile's capital, Santiago.

The miners' families, who held a candlelit vigil at their camp on Tuesday night, see the construction of the crane as one of the last steps towards their long-awaited reunion with their loved ones.

"You can see hope all around here in the form of people's growing happiness but people are worried and nervous in equal measure because the miracle has yet to happen," said Maria Segovia, sister of one of the trapped men.

Fears remain over the mental state of the miners, whose contact with the outside world has been limited by the narrow size of the supply shafts through which food, video cameras and games such as dominoes have been lowered.