Like many of you, I watched the amazing rescue of the miners in Chile - 33 miners plucked from certain death by the hard work of the rescuers more than 2,000 feet above. It seems the entire world was watching, waiting, and hoping for a successful outcome after months of effort. This morning the news is reporting that most of the miners are in 'remarkably good health' considering what they have had to endure. I'm not surprised. I know a molybdenum miner in the Colorado mountains, and if the miners in Chile are anything like him, they are an exceptionally hardy lot.
The reality is that this amazing rescue will too soon fade from the media's attention. We'll remember it as a feel-good event in our collective consciousness. 69 days these miners spent trapped underground. During those 69 days I'll admit that I only gave fleeting thought to the plight of these miners, paying attention only as the occasional news story flashed by.
There are many other mines in the area of the San Jose mine where these miners were trapped. News reports indicate nearly 10,000 miners work in this area of northern Chile. And for each of the 69 days their peers were trapped, these 10,000 miners continued to go to work, deep underground, facing the same risks and uncertainty that caught their fellow miners in the San Jose. A somewhat eerie fact is that since 2000, 34 people, about the same number as those who were trapped, have died every year on average in mining accidents in Chile — with a high of 43 in 2008. Though I'm sure they were covered by the press, I can't recall a single news story about those accidents. In doing a little research I found that another miner at the San Jose had lost a leg in a rockfall just a month before the 33 rescued miners were trapped.
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Henderson Mine
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To me, being 2,700 feet underground, let alone trapped, is mind-boggling. Yet the Chilean mine is not particularly deep compared to others. Right here in Colorado the Henderson Mine near the western base of Berthoud Pass is 2 to 3 times deeper, and in South Africa the TauTona gold mine reaches more than 12,600 feet (2.4 miles) underground. The 'commute' to work in a lift cage that transports the workers from the surface to the bottom dropping at speeds up to 16 meters per second (36 miles an hour) can take up to an hour. My commute from the west side of Denver to our Lowry location takes about that long and the only thing I have to deal with are my fellow Denver drivers.
While we celebrate the incredible rescue that's taken place this week in the desert of Chile, as a workers' compensation company we realize that every single day, 365 days a year, workers are engaged in all sorts of risky, and sometimes dangerous jobs. Our attention is on preventing the types of accidents that trapped the Chilean miners, as well as mitigating the risks that Colorado workers face every day. While perhaps not quite as exciting to read about as a mine rescue, we think those efforts are invaluable to the nearly 1.5 million employees working for our insured policyholders.
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