Chile: Race against time to rescue El Teniente miners

Rancagua: Some 100 rescue workers in central Chile are trying to reach five miners who went missing after part of the El Teniente copper mine collapsed in a major earth tremor on Thursday, killing one of their colleagues.

State-run copper producer Codelco said on Friday that a rescue team had progressed 4 metres (13 feet) toward the miners, with another 16 meters (53 feet) to go.

The company said that no contact had been established with the workers so far.

What happened at the El Teniente mine?
A tremor registering a magnitude of 4.2. hit the mine's new Andesita unit late on Thursday afternoon local time, causing a partial collapse that killed one miner while trapping the five others.

The miners, whose exact location has been detected using specialised equipment, were working at a depth of more than 900 metres (almost 3,000 feet) when the collapse occurred.  

Operations at the mine have been halted following the accident.

"We will do everything that is humanly possible to rescue the five trapped workers," Codelco's president, Maximo Pacheco,  told a press conference on Friday afternoon.

"All of our experience, all of our knowledge, all of our energy, and all of our strength are dedicated to this cause and to seeing this through," he added.

Authorities say they do not yet know whether the tremor was of natural origin or was caused by drilling.

Major copper producer
The El Teniente mine, the world's largest underground copper mine, is situated in Rancagua in the Andes Mountains, some 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of the capital, Santiago.

It began operating in the early 1900s and has more than 4,500 kilometres (some 2,800 miles) of underground tunnels.

 Last year, El Teniente produced 356,000 metric tonnes (over 392,000 tonnes) of copper — nearly 7% of Chile's total production.

Chile's mining industry is one of the safest in the world, with a fatality rate of 0.02 percent last year, according to the National Geology and Mining Service of Chile.

The country provides nearly a quarter of the global supply of copper, producing about 5.3 million metric tonnes (5.8 million tonnes) in 2024.