Chile miners stuck for 1 month now

On Saturday, the 33 men for the first time got to speak to their families by closed-circuit videolink, which relays images one way only, from the underground shelter to the surface.

The families said they would mark the one-month anniversary of the August 5 cave-in sounding horns and whistles at 2:30 p.m. (1830 GMT) Sunday.

“We've also got songs for them,” Elizabeth Segovia, whose brother Dario is stuck underground, told AFP.

Over the last month the miners have become national heroes and symbols of survival since rescuers made contact with them. In Chile and abroad, audiences are following their progress in minute detail.

Rescuers and relatives who had held out hope steadily grew to fear the worst, with no word from the men for more than two weeks after the collapse at the San Jose mine in Chile's remote Atacama desert.

But on August 22, a drill bit reached the underground shelter where they had managed to take refuge, surviving by rationing cans of tuna while they awaited rescue workers.

The men attached a note to the drill, which carried it to the surface, where Chilean President Sebastian Pinera read it aloud: “All 33 of us are well inside the shelter.”

Jubilation followed, with relatives of the men who had set up camp by the San Jose mine site cheering and celebrating the “miraculous” discovery.

Video images of the miners in their underground bunker — shot with a camera sent down a narrow supply shaft — were quickly broadcast around the world, further lifting hopes of their rescue.

But the euphoria was dampened by the news that rescuing the miners — 32 Chileans and one Bolivian — could take up to four months, leaving them to survive some 700 meters (2,300 feet) below ground potentially until Christmas.

A 30-ton drill that can excavate up to 20 meters (65 feet) per day began work Monday, with pauses to allow the bore hole walls to be cemented.

The painstaking process is the primary rescue route for now, but engineers have also two back-up options.

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