The San Jose mine in northern Chile has been under intense scrutiny over the past month as the world watches the painstaking rescue of 33 miners trapped half a mile below the earth’s surface.
The miners, trapped since August 5th, were discovered alive and well, or at least as well as can be expected, on August 22nd by rescue workers drilling a bore hole into the mine. However, experts have estimated it may be January 2011 before the stricken men can be returned safely to the surface. More recently, NASA scientific advisors have been drafted in to help prepare the men four their impending four months of isolation.
This latest incident has highlighted appalling safety conditions in Chilean mines, although it seems that the relatively small San Jose mine had fallen below par even by these low standard. Record’s show that San Jose has seen three fatal accidents since 2004, while Vincenot Tobar, a former risk management officer at the mine, has told press of 182 injuries in 2006 alone, 56 of them serious.
If there can be one positive from this situation it is that the Chilean authorities can no longer turn a blind eye to the conditions that their miners must endure. On August 11th Chilean president Sebastian Perina very publicly flexed his political muscles by sacking the heads of the national mining regulator Sernageomin. This followed rumours of countless incidences of negligence on the part of Sernageomin including the allegation that an escape ladder that could have initially led the trapped miners to freedom was only installed one third of the way up.
Injuries and even fatalities may be nothing new in Chile’s mines, but this latest accident is unprecedented in its nature and has left authorities woefully under-prepared. It is this lack of preparation that led to the bizarre situation of a group of men trapped half a mile away from their rescuers is being kept alive by scientists trained to deal with ultra-long-distance space flights. As we set foot into the unknown severel troubling questions are posed; how likely is it that rescuers will be able to keep these men alive for four months in isolation? And what long term trauma will this isolation cause?
Speaking to the Guardian newspaper Chilean health minister Jaime Manalich told of how his team was dealing with the challenge of keeping the men alive and well for as long as it takes for them to be rescued; “We have been preparing for possible medical emergencies, "How do you treat appendicitis without surgery? Our staff is scouring the old medical texts to find ways these kind of conditions can be treated without intervention, only using painkillers and other remedies."
One of the miners has also been designated as ‘doctor’ and will carry out minor treatments and health-checks on his fellow miners. However one problem that has been encountered is how to effectively deliver medication and other medical equipment to the miners through such a small aperture.
"[12 centimetre in diameter] is the size of the tube by which we can supply them," said Mañalich. "Everything we develop must be this size or smaller."
A team of doctors is also on hand on the surface to study images relayed back to them by the camera and check remotely for any physical or mental abnormalities.
Psychologically, however the miners and their rescuers are in uncharted territory. Rodrigo Figueroa, a leading Chilean psychiatrist, compared the men’s plight to a space mission or being trapped behind enemy lines, before admitting that he had scoured the medical text books and found “no similar situations like this, they simply don't exist." All this is indicative of a team pushing the frontiers of rescue operations and of human psychology.
Throughout the operation the rescuers have striven to keep the 33 men’s minds active and stimulated, whether it be by setting daily tasks such as the cleaning of the refuge or the arbitrary dismantling and re-assembling of mining machinery, or by giving the miners individual roles, such as the aforementioned doctor role given to one miner. Michael J. Poulin PHD is a published authority on human responses to stress and adversity- he has been following the case and believes that up to now the psychological well-being of the miner has been successfully safeguarded.
"There are few direct parallels to their experience," he says, "but we know, first of all, that the have been greatly deprived of control over their environment, which laboratory and field research indicates is highly stressful. Media reports suggest they are coping with this in some effective ways -- by taking control of what they can: organizing their living space, choosing leaders, relying on their religious faith and fashioning games and toys out of the materials available to them,"
But what of the lasting effects of this drawn out trauma? Will the miners be able to re-adjust to normal life on the outside after their ordeal? Scientists training astronauts for prospective Mars missions have identified that the only key to surviving such prolonged periods of isolation mentally intact is to maintain a healthy psychological routine; basically, rigorously acting out mundane tasks, such as those listed above, day in day out. In doing so the miners will retain a sense of purpose and, above all, hope. This will stave off depression and despair and keep tensions within the group to a minimum. However, unlike a Mars mission, these men have not been specifically selected for their psychological resilience and compatibility with one another as a unit and as the months unfold it will be up to them to keep up morale both individually and as a whole. This will be the key to coming out the other side unscathed.
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