Rescuers find bodies of 2 missing Ecuador miners

Portovelo, Agency
Rescuers found the bodies of two men who had been missing after an accident at a gold mine in southern Ecuador, dashing hopes of a repeat of the extraordinary rescue of 33 miners earlier this month in Chile.

Angel Vera, 29, and Pedro Mendoza, 28, were found dead Wednesday in one of the mine's chambers, where the rescuers had arrived after working around-the-clock since a cave-in last Friday.

One of them was without clothes and pressed up against one of the walls, while the other was partially buried under debris and wooden beams, according to the rescuers, who brought the corpses to the surface from a depth of 150 meters (490 feet).

Authorities still have not indicated the cause or time of their deaths.

On Saturday, rescuers found the bodies of 31-year-old Walter Vera, Angel's older brother, and 21-year-old Peruvian Paul Aguirre, whose remains have already been repatriated to his home city of Piura.

Optimism had abounded early Wednesday outside the Casa Negra mine - near the town of Portovelo, El Oro province - and President Rafael Correa even traveled to the mine to meet with rescue workers and the family members of the missing workers.

"We're optimistic because all indications are that they could be alive," Deputy Mining Secretary Jorge Espinosa told Efe Wednesday morning.

For his part, Juan Cando Pacheco, manager of the Minesadco company that operates the mine, said there was an "80 percent and as much as a 90 percent" probability that the miners would be found alive.

Espinosa said early Wednesday that rescuers believed oxygen was reaching the chamber where the miners were thought to be trapped via a water duct.

In addition, two helmet flashlights were found alongside a rubber boot, a signal used by the miners to indicate their location. Rescuers also were encouraged because there was no smell of rotting bodies.

Nevertheless, the rescuers were delayed Wednesday in trying to reach the chamber by another underground landslide, which forced them to retreat and then remove the new rubble that had accumulated.

Excessive humidity, the narrowness of the mine's galleries and temperatures inside the mine ranging between 35 F and 40 F complicated the rescue effort, in which priority was given to the rescuers' safety, Cando Pacheco said.

The Ecuadorian government had spoken to Chilean officials about the possibility of transporting the rescue team used to free 33 men trapped for 70 days at a mine in the northern region of that country.

But it was later decided that the equipment used in that earlier rescue would not be effective at the Casa Negra mine; instead, local miners took on the task, fighting blow-by-blow through debris to the spot where the missing men were trapped.

The discovery of the men's dead bodies was a tremendous disappointment after the rescuers' "heroic" work in recent days, the deputy non-renewable resources minister, Carlos Pareja Yannuzzelli, said.

During his visit, Correa said the focus was on finding the two miners, adding that an investigation into causes of the accident will come later.

Now that the fate of all four miners is known, that probe will take center stage.

The tragic end to this mine rescue effort in Ecuador came a week after the entire world was captivated by last week's rescue of 33 Chilean miners - trapped from Aug. 5 until Oct. 13 at the San Jose copper and gold mine after an underground landslide caused hundreds of thousands of tons of rocks to collapse above them

They survived for 17 days by carefully managing a meager emergency food supply at their ample underground shelter before rescuers made contact with them on Aug. 22 through a small bore hole and began sending them food, water, extra oxygen and medical supplies.

A hole big enough to fit a 13-foot-tall rescue capsule was then dug over several weeks and the 33 men were pulled out by pulley system one-by-one last Wednesday, ending the longest underground entrapment in recorded human history.