A Canadian military plane landed in the Dominican Republic on Sunday with a load of machinery and tools to help rescue the two workers trapped for a week at the Cerro de Maimón mine in the center of the country.
Vice President Raquel Peña and a delegation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs received the shipment sent by the Government of Canada to Las Américas International Airport, in response to the request made in this regard by the Dominican President, Luis Abinader.
The Dominican Mining Corporation (Cormidom), a Dominican company with Canadian capital and shareholders, manages and exploits the deposit in which the two miners, the Colombian Carlos Yepez Ospina and the Dominican Gregory Méndez Torres, were trapped after a collapse in the mine early Sunday morning.
The arrival of the equipment from Canada will allow the addition of a new strategy to rescue the miners, consisting of digging a vertical tunnel to the place where they are.
So far, the rescue operation, involving more than 70 people working around the clock, is being carried out using two strategies, one of which is to remove the debris from the site of the collapse, and the another by opening a tunnel and placing steel arches to reach the area where the collapse occurred.
On Thursday, coinciding with President Luis Abinader’s visit to the mining enclave, a third option was announced of using the subway’s tunnel boring machine to reach workers, a method that has yet to be put into operation.
The equipment provided, weighing a total of 52,000 pounds, includes a Cubex Model 6200 drill, weighing over 25,000 pounds with its mast and an R-110 Cubex Booster, an 8,500-pound equipment booster, tool boxes, racks of rods, transformers and own equipment for this type of operations.
The aid, coordinated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Dominican Ambassador to Canada, Michelle Cohen, was provided by Machines Roger International, a mining company based in Val-d’Or, Canada, and is carried out in coordination with the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Defense, Canadian Armed Forces and their counterparts in the Dominican Republic.
According to the information provided on the status of the workers, both are in good physical and mental health and the space in which they are staying, which is large, is adequately oxygenated.
Every day they receive water, food and medicine, and they benefit from psychological assistance, support that is also received by their families and the rest of the mine workers, which will not work until workers will not be safe on the surface.
