Chilean president arrives for mine rescue
The Chilean President Sebastian Pinera has arrived at the site of the Chilean Mine where 33 men have been trapped underground for ten weeks. The men are set to be rescued shortly.
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"It's fairly certain that we can start the rescue tonight," said Carlos Vilches, the representative for the Copiapo region where the mine is located.
The rescue had been scheduled to start later, but officials have become increasingly confident that they have everything prepared to begin sooner.
When the accident first happened, waiting families were told it would take until Christmas to get the miners out. Rescuers finished drilling last weekend the 622-meter-deep rescue tunnel. This reaches the gallery where they are trapped.
Since then, tests of the tunnel have been successfully completed, and the men can now be brought up one by one.
The 32 Chileans and one Bolivian were trapped in the San Jose mine in northern Chile on 5 August, when its upper galleries collapsed.
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