Pumps are continuing feverishly to pull water from a flooded coal mine in the Sabinas municipality of Mexico’s Coahuila state as 10 miners remain trapped underground since a flooding event on August 3.
According to an ABC News report, Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez – who has been to the site in northern Mexico – is calling for increased rescue efforts in fear time is expiring to find the workers alive.
At current, there are nearly 400 at the site, including military scuba divers, involved with the search, per Reuters. However, the report said, it has so far been too dangerous to enter the mine.
While pumping has done much to lower water levels, there are still large volumes to be extracted, Coahuila Gov. Miguel Angel Riquelme told ABC, and levels have dropped significantly from an initial 34-meter depth.
He added that five workers were able to escape from the operation – which has not been identified but called “crudely constructed” – just after the incident occurred, but no survivors have been found since.
The same report said the miners had been doing excavation on a nearby portion of the mine when they hit the waterlogged area.
Coahuila Attorney General Gerardo Marquez said his office has requested information from the landowner and mine concession holder but declined to name either of them.
Coahuila is the primary coal producing area in Mexico. It has seen a number of fatal mining accidents, the most recent being in 2021 when seven miners were killed at an operation owned by Henan Hebi Coal and Electricity.
That incident was classified as an “accidental outburst” and the bodies of seven initially called missing were eventually located and recovered.