Welsh mining disaster - not a Chilean mining miracle...

In Wales four coal miners died last week as a result of a wall collapsing and the shaft becoming flooded. This goes to show that the Chilean miners’ rescue in 2010 was nothing short of a miracle, and that mining is still a job that has its risks.

On Thursday the 15^th September emergency services were called to a mine near Swansea in south Wales. Three miners had escaped when the retaining wall collapsed and water flooded in. Mine rescue divers went in and navigated their way through the dark flooded tunnels to try to locate survivors.

Over the first day and night there were hopes for their survival. The world was assured that oxygen levels were high enough to survive in air pockets where those trapped may have got into.  On Friday morning they found the first body and by Saturday they had found the fourth. Wales didn’t get a Chilean miracle.

On the 5^th August 2010 there was a collapse in the mine shaft of a copper and gold mine in the Atacama desert of Chile. 33 miners found their way to a survival station in the mine. A borehole was drilled down to them and they were passed food, water, medication and communications with family, friends and the world’s media.

The media tend to look at something different. OK, so another bunch of miners dying 700 metres underground. May make the national media at most. An average of 33 miners a year die in Chile every year, so nothing new there. What got the world’s attention was that they survived, and would go on to be rescued 3 months later.

Not long after a similar number of Chinese miners were trapped in a coal mine, deep underground. Briefly the world wondered whether they would be rescued alive? The answer came shortly after – no.

Mining, by virtue you are digging a large hole and removing the substrate around you, will always be risky. Tunnelling is the same. The best one can do in such circumstances is minimise risk. If anyone does something that risks death enough, it is inevitable that someone will die doing it. Flying at 30 000 feet in a jet? Only by a miracle will someone survive such a fall. There are air crashes every year, but risk is minimised to the point that millions will fly on a regular basis and even the most regular fliers will have a high statistical chance of never having an accident in the air.

For the community around those who died, the loss will be felt badly. Mining communities are often close knit. Everyone in the village will know one of the four, or their immediate relatives well. Such communities know the risks though, and stories are passed through the generations of disaster and loss. Mining is a risky business, and the Chilean miracle was such because it was so unusual.