Lily Mine Collapse: Focus on rescue, not recovery
The efforts underway at the Lily Mine outside Barberton, Mpumalanga are still focussed on search and rescue.
The mine's Mike Begg was asked if this has become more of a recovery mission than a rescue, seeing as the three trapped workers have been underground for a week.
He assured media that, as far as he was concerned, it was still a rescue mission.
Begg said changing it from a rescue to a recovery mission was really not something he wanted to do.
"I think the terminology of recovery is not just about the physiology of the people in the container. It will come dependent on the resources we've got, whether the resources are being strained." he said.
He said there might come a time when all of these factors may lead them to decide that they were moving into a different phase, but that won't be made without the collaboration of the families, the department of mineral resources and union leadership.
"We have discussed that already and we are still in rescue phase."
Begg said they were taking it day by day.