Patience, Have Patience - and Hope
Night is probably the most difficult time. For both the families of the trapped miners, sleeping fitfully, anxiously, in their improvised Camp Hope colony, awaiting the rescue of their loved ones, and the thirty-three trapped miners, trying to sleep in their underground, isolated bunker. The long, lonely hours of haunting memories of just a month earlier when freedom of movement, close intimate contact, the feel of the sun and fresh air were all real and present.The new reality of being trapped deep underground at 700 metres from the surface of the Earth, surrounded by granite, with the possibility, however remote, of unexpected movement of settling soil and rock further exacerbating a tenuous existence is a difficult one to even imagine. Dire isolation, the very thought of being forcefully removed from all that is familiar and suddenly more dear than ever before, has a soul-debilitating effect. It spells desolation.
Experts in the effects of solitary confinement have a fairly good idea of the prospects of the 33 men's intact psychological survival. Their bodily needs are being serviced to the best of the ability of technical experts who managed to rig a life-line where sustenance can be provided and messages of hope conveyed to ensure physical survival. So near, yet so very impossibly far; theirs the need to sustain hope and anticipate recovery.
Chilean authorities were loathe to tell the trapped miners the entire truth, that their rescue would necessitate careful and time-consuming plans to drill a relief tunnel. Engineers are completing the assemblage of a powerful 40-ton drill capable of boring through the 700 metres of rock and earth. The excavation chute would not be a generous size, just sufficient for the weight-lost miners to squeeze singly through to the surface.
The miners have been informed that there will be a significant period of time to elapse before they can contemplate being rescued. Two months at most, they were told, in the fear that if the real time-frame was revealed it would be too nonsustaining a shock for the men, already suffering the trauma of their rock-bound incarceration, and just recovering from their semi-starvation state.
The men are bitter that their plight is a direct result of the mine company's ignoring of legislated safety features. The mine, having had to shut down previously due to a series of accidents which left 16 miners dead, was re-opened without established safety protocols having been followed. The general feeling being that influence-peddling was involved, where a state official was in collusion with the mine to the detriment of worker safety.
A common enough occurrence not just in Latin America, but just about everywhere that mining takes place, including North America.
Emotions are in full reign, and fears are justifiably expressed, and then repressed as hope re-surfaces. Communication between family and trapped miners helps considerably to instill a further sense of hope for a successful rescue. It is the state of mind of the trapped miners at the time of rescue that is uppermost in thought of the authorities and the mental-health experts.
And eventually, as work progresses and time passes, the men trapped so deep in the bowels of the Earth will have to be informed that their time of rescue is not yet, but imminent, if they only exercise a little more patience; another month, perhaps two, at most. Not the two they were informed to anticipate, to be rescued by September, but December a more likely freedom date.
"There is no technology available that would enable us to perform the rescue in one or two months", Chilean Mining Minister Laurence Goldborne admitted.
Labels: Health, Human Relations, World News
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, August 31, 2010
<< Home