Power outage hampers efforts to save miners in Mexico

AS IF the effort to rescue 65 trapped coal miners wasn’t hampered enough by toxic gas and walls of debris, a local power outage early yesterday briefly shut down a ventilation system.

Mine officials were counting on the machinery to pump fresh air to the victims.

Rescue workers wearing gas masks and oxygen tanks have been digging by hand for three days, working without electric or gas-powered machinery because of the presence of explosive gases in the Pasta de Conchos mine. But after more than 50 hours of digging, they still hadn’t reached any survivors.