On Thursday, August 1, 2025, a magnitude 5.0 earthquake hit Chile, causing catastrophic damage to the infrastructure in the area. A copper mine near the place in which the earthquake hit was severely hard. The earthquake caused the mine to collapse trapping five workers and killing another.

That Thursday rescuers were sent frantically searching in the 65 feet of ruble in hopes to find all the missing men. The severity of the natural disaster that had occurred, caused this job to be increasingly harder. Repeated aftershocks were just one of the many troubles the rescuers had to look out for, because of this the search was severely slowed down in the long run. The exact cause of the crumbling of the mine is unknown, but is speculated to have been an earthquake that had hit nearby detected by the U.S. Geological Survey on Thursday. The National Copper Corporation of Chile, known as Codelco, said the accident was caused by a “seismic event.” near Machalí, where the copper mine is located.

On August 3rd, rescue teams had located and found three bodies, all deceased, which brought the total to four of six bodies found. The forth man rescued was identified to be Paulo Martin Tapia, a man had been working on the Andesita project in an effort to expand the El Teniente mine. Rescuers are still on the search in hopes to find the other two missing workers.

This event is similar to one that happened back in 2010 when 33 workers were trapped under rubble for weeks before getting rescued. This event occurred in the Atacama desert, when a mine also had collapsed trapping a number of miners underground for weeks, believing they had died. Some rescuers that helped in this event went on to help in the search for survivors in the collapse of the Chilean mine.