Elisa Menendez
THE mammoth mission to rescue two-year-old Julen is reaching its final stage.
After 11 days of tireless work, miners are finally ready to be sent down the tunnel to reach the little tot today.
At 5am this morning engineers finished cladding the 60-metre vertical well with a tube to ensure the miners can safely be sent down to finish the final stage of the rescue operation.
In just a few hours the specialist miners from the Hunosa Mining Rescue Brigade will manually dig the last four metres to reach little Julen Jimenez, who fell down a well on January 13 in Totalan.
The eight miners are currently waiting by the tunnel, which they will be lowered into through a capsule-lift via a platform.
They are expected to descend some 50 metres underground.
From there they will start manually excavating a horizontal tunnel from a window in the tube, with pneumatic hammers and spades.
They will wear masks, oxygen detectors and will be in contact via telephone.
It comes after the toddler fell down the 107-metre deep hole 11 days ago, during a family picnic.
The mission has seen multiple setbacks for the 300-strong team, who have been carrying out a procedure which would ‘normally take six to seven months’ in just days.
