Trapped miners speak to loved ones:

Big drill starts

CHILE: Chile’s 33 trapped miners spoke for the first time with their loved ones Sunday, reassuring each other in brief but moving conversations by radio-telephone after 24 days underground.

“To hear his voice was a balm to my heart,” said Jessica Chille after speaking to her husband, Dario Segovia.

Limited to one minute per miner, the wives, mothers and fathers lined up for their first person-to-person conversations since a cave-in August 5 blocked the miners’ exit from the San Jose gold and copper mine.

“I didn’t break down until I told him: ciao, my little boy, we will see each other,” said Alicia Campos, after speaking to her son Daniel Herrero.

“His voice is the same. He’s not good but not so bad either,” she said.

The conversations were morale boosters for miners and their families who must wait three to four months to be rescued.

Until now, they only have been able to exchange written messages and video images relayed through narrow probe holes.

Out of sight of family and media, engineers finished assembling a powerful Strata 950 drill to bore through more than 700 meters (2,300 feet) of rock and earth to reach the miners.

A delay in the arrival of a missing part set back the schedule by several hours but “drilling will begin Monday,” Mining Minister Laurence Goldborne told reporters.

“The shaft we’re drilling to the shelter will go down 702 meters in a straight line,” the engineer in charge of the rescue operation, Andre Sougarret, told AFP on Saturday.

The 30-ton machine will first bore a hole 35 centimeters (14 inches) in diameter, and then enlarge it with a reamer to 66 centimeters (26 inches).

Under optimal conditions, the state-of-the-art Australian-designed drill is capable of advancing 20 meters (66 feet) a day Copiapo, Monday, AFP