As three miners remain trapped underground at the Red Chris mine in northern B.C., a leading mining expert says they are likely “a bit worried” but generally calm in knowing they will be rescued.
With two reported collapses now blocking miners behind a pile of debris 20 to 30 metres long and seven to eight metres high, professor of mining engineering Ferri Hassani of McGill University says that rescue time will depend on the size of the rocks blocking the tunnel and whether secondary blasting will be required.
“The difficulty depends how big these blocks that have come into the tunnel are. If they are very big, that is time consuming, because a loader or remote control scoop or a loader cannot pick them up, so you have to go in and have a secondary blasting on those rocks and break them and then scoop them,” Hassani said in an interview with The Epoch Times. …