SANTIAGO, Sept 1 (NNN-EFE) — The National Copper Corporation (Codelco) of Chile evacuated the El Teniente deposit, the largest underground copper mine in the world located in the central area of the country, following a mild earthquake to the west of the site, which one month ago recorded a fatal accident with six fatalities.
According to the company, at 12:41 local time an earthquake of 2.3 degrees on the Richter scale shook the mine, triggering preventive protocols for stopping activities and evacuating all workers.
“The seismic event occurred to the west of the deposit below altitude 1.518, in an area that is currently not operational,” the company said.
“Codelco reports that no workers have been reported injured by this incident and is evaluating conditions before defining next actions inside the mine,” he said.
For its part, the National Seismological Center of the University of Chile does not have in its record telluric movements of the magnitude indicated by Codelco, neither in the region of O’Higgins nor the area where the mine is located.
With more than 4,500 kilometers of tunnels, equivalent to the distance between Madrid and Moscow, El Teniente is owned by the Chilean state-owned Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer that produced a total of 356,000 metric tons of fine copper in 2024.
On July 31, a collapse whose causes are still being investigated claimed the lives of six workers at El Teniente, the worst accident in more than three decades at the site since 1990, when another «rock explosion» left six miners dead. — NNN-EFE
