Knowing Your Audience Paper and Communication
Loretta Lucero
BCOM 275
May 30, 2012
Glenn Arola

Knowing Your Audience Paper and Communication
On August 5, 2012. The San Jose mine in northern Chili, collapsed, trapping 33 miner. The is owned by Minera San Esteban Primera. This was the third collapse since 2007. The miners were trapped 9842 feet under the ground. They had very little food, water and oxygen.
According to Raul Villegas, who barely escaped the mine collapse, at approximately 2:00 pm that day, dust was filling the cavern, but he was only mildly concerned because that was a normal occurrence. However, as he got closer to the surface, he and his truck was almost over taken by a bigger cloud of dust, in circling him in dirt and darkness. Raul stated that he just made it out of the cavern when the mine collapsed. He goes on to state that it felt like a dynamite explosion, with an immense wave. He did report the incident to his supervisors, but it was hours later that the company notified the authorities. He and other workers tried to enter the cavern to start a recue effort but they soon realized that the ramp to enter the cavern had disappeared.
The regions six-person special operations squad then triesd to enter the cavern arounf 9:00 pm, but returned around 6:00 am the next morning empty handed, shaken and drenched in sweat. By this time, relatives and reporters had arrived on the site, demanding answers, alonf with a number of independent miners, called pirquineros, who promised to sacrifice their own lives to dig out the trapped men.
When the special operations tean failed a second time to enter the mune, the Chilean government began to assemble their own rescue team. It recruited Codeco, a state-owned mining company and the largest producers of copper in the world. This company had experts trained for collapses such as this. They also used engineer, Andre Sougarret and risk management expert, Rene Aguilar to the recue mission. The miner’s lives were in their hands. They would spend nearly a week trying to recue the miner through the main entrance, but rock continued to fall, causing the rescuers themselves to run from the tunnels. That rescue stategy was soon abandoned, and family members became distraught when they saw the rescue vehicles leaving the base of the mine.
Kevin Brown, an Australian drilling expetrt, who assisted in the rescue, remembers when the government recue team decided to drill to the miners. According to reports there were nine drills pounding into the mountain at close proximity. It was chaos according to Brown, “Everyone was trying very hard and very fast, but it was hopeless in the early days” Seventten days later, they made contact with the miners.
Two more holes were drilled that reached the miners. They were nicknamed polamas, or doves. One was rigged with telephone lines and fiber optics and used for piping in water and oxygen into the chamber. The second one was used to send specially planned meals by a nutritionist. The miners maintained a diet of 2500 calories a day. The third hole was going to be used to rescue the miners.
Family began to set up camp at the base of the mine as the news began to break as soon as the news broke about the collapsed mine. They named it Campamento Esparanza, or Camp Hope. There many of the family members of the miners’ waited for any news and later on, to communicate with their trapped loved ones.

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[ 1 ]. www.thestar.com