Collapse at Chile’s major copper mine kills 1 worker and leaves 5 missing

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — A collapse at a copper mine in Chile killed one worker and left five trapped underground, authorities said on Friday, forcing Chile’s state mining company to suspend operations in the affected area of the world’s largest underground copper deposit.

Nine other mine workers suffered injuries, said Chile’s National Copper Corporation, known as Codelco, describing the incident as the result of “a seismic event.”

The U.S. Geological Survey reported a magnitude 5 earthquake in an area of central Chile where Codelco’s El Teniente mine is located, at 5:34 p.m. local time on Thursday. Authorities said they’re still investigating whether it was a naturally occurring earthquake or whether mining activity at El Teniente caused the quake.

Chile’s national disaster response service, Senapred, said that the tremor struck the Machalí commune in the O’Higgins region, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the capital, Santiago.

Codelco identified the deceased worker as Paulo Marín Tapia and said he was killed while working on the Andesita project, a 25-kilometer (15-mile) tunnel complex expanding from the El Teniente mine on the western slopes of the Andes Mountains.

The company said that search-and-rescue teams were struggling to determine the exact location of the collapse that buried at least five workers underground. As part of the mountain shook and fell, mounds of rocks and dirt caved in, blocking all access routes to the work sites 900 meters underground.

Mining officials said they had no contact with the workers and it was not clear whether they were alive or dead. The names of the trapped miners were not released.

“We are making every effort to try to rescue these five miners,” said Andrés Music, general manager of El Teniente. “The next 48 hours are crucial.”

Authorities stopped operations at that part of the copper deposit and evacuated 3,000 people from the site to safe areas.

Chile, the world’s largest copper producer, also lies in the seismically active “Ring of Fire” that surrounds the shores of the Pacific Ocean.

The country has witnessed numerous mine accidents over the years, the most dramatic perhaps the 2010 rescue of 33 miners trapped underground in the San José mine for 69 days — finally to emerge alive and thrust into the spotlight of international celebrity.