preview

Crisis Management: Disaster in Chile Essay

Better Essays

On October 13, 2010, thirty three miners of Chile were finally rescued. The men had been trapped underground since August 5, 2010 when a rockfall caused a tunnel to collapse. Since then, the miners had remained trapped in a collapsed gold and copper mine for two months. The miners were hauled to the surface by a specially designed steel shaft known as “Phoenix” capsule through 2,050 feet of rock to the surface. While the mission of rescuing was completed, the Chilean government has gained enormous applauds from the world for their meticulous and systematic crisis management. Based on the Chile mine disaster, I would like to discuss some issues arising from the catastrophe in which it will be the nature of the crisis, the steps of crisis …show more content…

As the definitions stated above, a crisis has the characteristic of being a major, unpredictable event that cause harmful effect in which the Chile mine disaster falls under these particular definitions. On the other hand, one shall not forget the basic causes of a crisis may be of the acts of God, mechanical problems, human errors, and/ or management decisions or indecisions. In the case of Chile mine disaster, one would claim that it might be the acts of God since Chile has experienced earthquake six months before the collapsed of the mine. Others would blame that it is human error as the miners realize poor safety standards in the mine, but they never aggressively voice up to the management to take any action. The management indecisions shall be put on blame as they did not have a formalized crisis management plan beforehand that caused them to panic after the tragedy. The private held San Esteban mining company, who owned the mine, went bankrupt in September, a month after the tragedy, leaving the Chile government alone to take responsibility on rescuing plan right after the collapsed of the mine due to the mine company lacking of formalized crisis management plan and experience. Moreover, the mechanical problems also contributed to such crisis. In which, the miners were at first tried to escape all the way through the ventilation shaft system, but the ladders required by mining safety codes were absent.

Get Access