Chile enlists NASA, navy to help miners

Specialists including psychiatrists and nutritionists from NASA were scheduled to discuss in a conference call ways to help the miners cope with the physical and mental challenges of being trapped underground for such a long period, Health Minister Jaime Manalich said.

The miners were found to be alive on Sunday after being entombed 2,300 feet underground since Aug. 5 when the only access to the San Jose mine collapsed. A three-month rescue is unheard of in the mining industry, said Rob McGee, an official of the Uniontown, Pa.-based US Mine Rescue Association.

“It’s being evaluated whether a NASA mission comes in the coming days to review the quality of our operation,’’ Manalich said yesterday in televised comments. The rescue drilling may take three months, he said.

The miners’ only contact with the outside world is via drill holes, 2.4 inches wide, that were used to discover them and through which they receive food, water, and medicine.

“It’s extremely fragile,’’ Manalich said. “It’s truly an umbilical cord.’’

The mine is owned by Compania Minera San Esteban Primera. State-owned Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer, is shipping a chimney-cutter to the site that will bore a hole wide enough to pull the men out. Andre Sougarret, who leads the rescue mission, manages El Teniente in central Chile, the world’s largest underground copper mine.

BHP Billiton of Melbourne and Freeport McMoRan Copper (and) Gold Inc. of Phoenix, which also mine for copper in Chile, form part of the rescue team. Chile provides a third of the world’s copper.

Drillers will have to bore through the “unstable geology’’ found in the Atacama Desert to reach the miners, said J. Davitt McAteer, who was appointed to investigate the causes of a blast last spring at Massey Energy Co.’s Performance Coal operation in Montcoal, W. Va., that killed 29 people.

The technique of lifting workers from a man-sized hole first proved successful in 1963 after David Fellin and Henry Throne were pulled out of the Sheppton coal mine in Pennsylvania after being trapped for 14 days.

Freeing the miners is “still a hell of a problem,’’ McAteer said. “Lots of things can go wrong. You’ve got to be lucky and be good as well.’’

The trapped miners in Chile have access to more than 1.24 miles of tunnels and a small refuge with benches, Enes Zepeda, director of Codelco’s supervisors union FESUC, said in an interview. They are sleeping on the ground with blankets, he said.

Chile’s rescue plan will surpass a 25-day rescue of three coal miners in a flooded mine in Guizhou, China, McGee said in an e-mailed response to questions. Two Australian miners walked free in May 2006 after being trapped for two weeks almost 1,000 meters underground in a gold mine in Tasmania.

NASA’s astronauts have spent up to six months on the International Space Station in a living space of 12,705 cubic feet, more than a five-bedroom house, spokeswoman Stephanie Schierholz said in a telephone interview from Washington.

“Maybe we can help in the psychology of the trapped miners and their families,’’ Jose Hernandez, who last year embarked on a 13-day mission on Space Shuttle Discovery, wrote in a Twitter posting. He didn’t respond to requests to verify the comments.

Conflicts may occur when people are trapped together in a confined space for prolonged periods, said Ana Maria Aron, a psychologist who heads a unit at Chile’s Catholic University that helps patients who have suffered from traumatic experiences. The government is doing a good job in giving the miners tasks such as monitoring their health, which helps them feel they have control over their situation, Aron said.

“This is a task of great undertaking, without any precedence in the history of medicine,’’ Manalich said.