From that day when he was close to death, David Huerta remembers the beam of the headlamp of a colleague heading towards him shouting “water! water!”
He ran at full speed for his life, scratching his body against the walls, his head hitting the support posts.
“Water is our worst enemy,” said the 35-year-old, who spent 13 years working in the Sabinas mines in the northern state of Coahuila, the country’s largest producer.
His brother-in-law, Sergio Cruz, is one of ten missing from the El Pinabete mine, about 60 meters deep, flooded since excavation work on August 3. The water that invaded El Pinabete came, according to the authorities, from an adjacent, larger and abandoned mine.
The hundred rescuers involved, including members of the military, have since pumped tirelessly, around the clock, to lower the water level in the mine, hoping to find the ten missing who never gave the slightest sign of life.
While their efforts seemed to bear fruit, even allowing divers to explore the entrance to the cavity which is accessed by vertical wells, a sudden rise in the water level over the weekend has dried up the slim hopes of relatives.
The level measured is even higher than the day after the accident.
Unwilling to resolve to abandon the research, the government validated a new action strategy aimed at building an underground wall separating it from the neighboring mine, by drilling then pouring huge quantities of concrete.
– Negligence –
It is thanks to the extraction of coal from these small mines, such as that of El Pinabete, built in a hurry and with lax safety standards, that the power plants of Mexico run.
In Sabinas, 67 companies are registered to exploit the vein, according to official figures. Between September 2020 and December 2021, two million tonnes of coal were mined.
Fossil fuel has a high human cost. According to the NGO “Familia Pasta de Conchos”, named after the mine where 65 miners died in an explosion in 2006 and which campaigns for justice, around 3,100 miners have died in the region since 1883.
Conditions have changed little since the beginning of coal mining. Even today, miners work “almost naked” underground in temperatures of around 35 degrees, without adequate ventilation, explains David Huerta, for a salary of 150 to 200 dollars a week.
They spend up to six hours a day, their bodies can’t take any more, bent over or kneeling in cramped tunnels, without proper safety gear, not even the slightest mask to prevent respiratory disease.
“The only thing we give them is a helmet and a lamp,” says Cristina Auerbach, director of “Familia Pasta de Conchos”. “And the helmet they give it because otherwise the miners have nowhere to fix their lamp”, she mocks.
But for miners and specialists, the biggest neglect of employers is lack of knowledge of underground geology.
“They don’t hire engineers, they don’t do calculations, they don’t measure production, they just extract, sell and that’s it,” says Diego Martinez, from the Geosciences Research Center applied from the Autonomous University of Coahuila.
According to Mr. Martinez, in El Pinabete, no one checked the plans or guided the excavation manoeuvres. The local authorities confirmed that no follow-up of the plans was carried out.
The company registered as the owner of El Pinabete remained silent.
“The owner doesn’t care as long as he gets the coal out,” David Huerta says indignantly.
Despite the risks, mining is, for many in the region, the only source of income. “We have always worked here (…) it is very difficult to leave,” laments Luis Ontiveros, without losing hope of seeing his ten colleagues alive again.