Job offers pour in for trapped miners

September 15, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

SANTIAGO, Chile

Chile’s 33 trapped miners have something good to think about: their next jobs. Bulldozer driver, mechanic, electrician. And here’s a couple they might find particularly useful: “risk reduction specialist” and “escape-tunnel driller.”

Two dozen companies with operations in Chile have made more than 1,000 job offers to the trapped miners and their 317 sidelined co-workers at a job fair this week. Even if they choose to go back to mining, the work won’t necessarily be underground, and it will almost certainly be with a company with a better safety record than their struggling current employer.

The 33 miners have been trapped for 40 days in harrowing, sweltering conditions since an Aug. 5 collapse. No miners in history have been trapped so long, and it still could be months before a hole large enough to get them out is completed. They are getting food, medicine, communication and other essentials through narrower holes dug by rescuers, but their anxiety has become evident, with more questions asked each time they hear the drilling stop.

Their relatives wait anxiously for the miners, many in tents at the mine itself, but in many ways life goes on without them. One of them, Ariel Ticona, became a father for the first time Tuesday.

The San Esteban mining company, which owns the mine, has pursued bankruptcy protection since the collapse and has claimed it can’t afford to pay the trapped miners, even though they’ll have to work their way out by clearing rubble around the clock below the escape tunnels.