Water is the archenemy of Mexican miners, according to David Huerta, who survived a similar catastrophe in 2012 in which ten workers were buried in a mine in the country’s north and nothing was known about them more than two weeks later.
He was going to die that day, and he recalls vividly opening his eyes to find a lamp beam pointed at him and originating from the helmet of his colleague, who was yelling as he approached him, “Water! Water!”
He rushed as fast as he could to save himself, slamming into walls and support posts.
“Water is our archenemy,” says David, 35, who spent 13 years working at the Sabinas mines in Coahuila, Mexico’s largest coal-producing state.
And his brother Sergio Cruz is still missing in the El Benabit mine, which is around 60 meters deep and was buried during excavation operations on August 3rd. The officials discovered that the water was coming from a larger abandoned mine nearby.
Rescuers, including army personnel, labored for 24 hours without pausing to collect water from the pumps in the hope of discovering the ten workers who did not appear to be alive.
After it appeared that their efforts were bearing fruit when operations began to send divers into the tunnel using vertical wells, the water level increased again over the weekend, dashing the hopes of the missing family.
The water level climbed higher than it had been the day before the disaster.
The government insisted on continuing the research work, and approved a new action plan for the intervention based on the construction of an underground wall separating the two mines, by dumping huge amounts of cement.
Helmet and flashlight Mexico’s power plants rely on coal from tiny mines like El Benabit, which were excavated in haste and with no firm safety regulations.
According to government estimates, 67 enterprises in the Sabinas region have been registered to carry out extraction activities, allowing the purchase of two million tons of coal between September 2020 and December 2021.
However, the cost of this fossil product is excessive in terms of the employees’ lives.
According to the non-governmental group Familia Pasta de Conchos, which advocates for workers’ legal remedies, 65 miners were murdered in an explosion in the Conchos area in 2006.
Since 1883, around 3,100 laborers have been killed in the region.
Since the beginning of coal mining, little has changed. Today, David emphasizes, laborers still work “nearly nude” underground in temperatures of around 35 degrees Fahrenheit without sufficient air for a weekly compensation of $150 to $200.
They labor six hours a day, and their bodies can no longer endure bending over or kneeling in small tunnels without specific safety equipment, not even breathing masks.
“He merely offers them a helmet and a lantern,” Christina Auerbach, director of the Familia Pasta de Conchos, adds.
The biggest neglect for miners and specialists is that their operators are unaware of the mysteries of the earth’s geology.
“They don’t recruit engineers, they don’t make calculations, they don’t measure productivity, they just worry about extraction and sales,” said Diego Martinez, a researcher at Coahila University’s Research Center on Applied Geology.
He goes on to say that no one was verifying the charts or overseeing the drilling and extraction activities in El Pinabet, and local officials acknowledged that the plans were not carried out.
And the business that operates the mines in the region has kept silent.
“The owners don’t care as long as there is coal mining,” David rages.
Despite the hazards, many people in the region consider mining to be their principal source of income. “We’ve been here for a long time; it’s difficult to go,” Luis Onteferos explains.
About Author
