A team of miners specialised in rescue missions has now dug almost 2.5m of the parallel shaft that is supposed to lead them to the 2-year-old boy who fell down a well in southern Spain 12 days ago.
However, the rescue team fears they will encounter several complications due to the type of soil they are excavating.
“You have to take into account the extremely hard material they find (on their way),” said the Guarda Civil’s spokesperson, Jorge Martin, in a press conference on Friday. “You have to follow the rhythm of the mountain.”
Miners were originally going to excavate with jackhammers but they were forced to change their plan and instead use microexplosions to soften the ground.
Martin said law enforcement officials from the Guarda Civil went to Seville to get more explosives.
The miners started their descent on Thursday night via the parallel shaft and have been underground for more than 16 hours. If there are no further obstacles, they estimated they will reach the target area in 24 hours.
Julen fell down the 25-cm-wide well on January 13, as his family walked through a private estate in Totalan, Malaga.
A team of 300 have been working to rescue the boy.
Euronews spoke to Santiago Suarez, the former head of the Hunosa Mine Rescue Brigade, about what to expect from the final stretch of the mission.
He said the composition of the terrain would slow the miners down: “In the mine… the material is softer, be it coal or any type of metal.”
The Euronews
