No Newmont employees or their families were hurt during the massive earthquake that rocked Chile on February 27 and claimed at least 700 lives. Many of our nine employees in Santiago experienced damage to their homes, and the company is working to ensure they are safe and have access to necessities.
The 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck early on a Saturday morning. The epicenter, off the coast of central Chile, was some 100 and 150 miles to the south of Santiago, the nation's capital and location of Newmont's engineering group for the Conga project.
The quake caused a handful of buildings to collapse in Santiago and damaged at least 500,000 homes.
After the earthquake, Newmont mobilized its South American regional Rapid Response team and our Travel Tracker system, which helped identify and locate our employees.
At our Yanacocha operation in Peru, the earthquake impacted communications and disrupted information technology. Our IT group worked with our vendors CSC and Global Crossing to restore connections as quickly as possible.
A big thank you to the countless people at Newmont who worked together to make sure our people were safe during this natural disaster.
