33 Men

by Jonathan Franklin

  Like a divining rod homing in on water, the angle of perforation in those last feet changed ever so slightly. After two weeks of nature foiling their every effort, Sougarret and Hurtado were rewarded with a positive surprise. The drill somehow corrected its course. “In the drilling things happened that had no engineering logic. I believe that something occurred,” said Sougarret as he struggled to explain the last-minute correction. Asked if he meant a miracle, Sougarret became cautious. “We had luck there . . . or help.”

  At 5:50 am, as the drill passed 2,257 feet, Flores felt the entire shaft go into a brief free fall. There was no more resistance; the drill had broken into an empty space 12.5 feet deep.

  DAY 17: INSIDE THE MINE

  With virtually no energy remaining, the miners had long ago abandoned the idea of staying up all night waiting for a drill to arrive. Sleep had never been easy. Humid air, wet ground and the tense environment had always conspired to prevent a deep sleep. All-night domino games served to ease insomnia and combat the terror of starving to death.

  At 5:50 am, the sound of a whirring drill, crashing rock and a grinding noise shattered the calm inside the wet, slippery tunnel. “I was awake, playing dominoes,” said Richard Villarroel, who was down the tunnel in the refuge. “When the drill broke through, it was the most marvelous moment for all of us. We looked at the drill and were stunned. It even took us a few moments to understand the importance of what had happened. Only then did we start to hug and celebrate. We then understood the reality. They were going to save us.” Then chaos took over. “It was crazy, people were running everywhere,” said Villarroel. “I looked for something to hit the tube with.”

  DAY 17: RESCUE OPERATION

  In the dawn light at the drill site above ground, the workers jumped up and down, hugged and yelled and awaited instructions from Hurtado. Flores immediately shut off the drill.

  Gathered around the shaft in silence, Gabriel Diaz, an assistant on the drilling operation, was ready with a sixteen-pound hammer. He pounded the tube three times. Immediately, Hurtado put his ear to the tube. He heard a faint rhythmic ringing from below—“like someone hitting the shaft with a spoon,” said Hurtado. Moments later a series of deep metallic thuds rose from below, unmistakable signs of life.

  The echoes from below were obvious; how could there be any doubt that deep below someone was whacking away at the tube? But Hurtado and his crew were torn. A week earlier a borehole they drilled at San José had followed this same scenario—upon reaching a tunnel at a depth of 1,640 feet, the drillers heard rhythmic percussions. Then when a video camera was lowered to the depth, the men were incredulous at the sight: no sign of life. No miners. Had they imagined life below? Was the mine taunting them?

  Minister Golborne and Sougarret rushed to the borehole. Like a doctor in search of a pulse, Sougarret used a stethoscope to amplify the distant thumps. Someone was pounding away. Golborne began hugging the rescue workers, then, looking stunned, he pulled off his helmet and headed down the hill, determined to be the first to inform the families. Tent by tent, the minister spread his cautious message: We will have news today. Be alert. The entire camp came alive with expectation. Journalists pestered the minister for answers; he remained secretive, offering only that the president would be arriving. The family members, roused from their slumber, began waving the Chilean flag and chanting, “Viva Chile!”

  DAY 17: INSIDE THE MINE

  From all directions, miners came running to see the drill, a swarm of men with cans of spray paint, determined to paint the drill. “We were afraid it would pull up and go away. We had to work fast,” said Alex Vega, who explained how the men forgot their long-rehearsed protocol. “We were supposed to first stabilize the area, to make sure the loose rocks on the ceiling were knocked away, then attach the messages, but it all happened so fast we did it backwards: everyone was working on the drill and the roof was still dangerous.”

  With a heavy wrench the size of a baseball bat, Villarroel began slamming the tube. A booming crack echoed inside the tunnel. But did it echo above? Villarroel switched to an iron tube from one of the mining machines. Iron striking iron, the combination sounded like a gong. The miners took turns battering the drill shaft.

  With slabs of rock dangling above their heads, the men tied letters and notes to the drill shaft. Mario Gómez and José Ojeda attached their messages—to wife and to rescue officials, respectively. Other men clumsily bound their written notes to the now motionless drill. Mario Sepúlveda ripped off his underwear and tore out the elastic, which he used to wrap the messages to the drill shaft.

  For an hour the men banged the tube. They sprayed until the paint was gone. Then the drill slowly rose. Again the men were alone. Now the atmosphere inside the tunnels became charged with a miraculous sense of resurrection. From the brink of starvation, cannibalism and a torturously slow death, the men were suddenly just hours away from a heavenly answer to their prayers: food.

  DAY 17: RESCUE OPERATION

  Back at Borehole 10B, Hurtado and his drilling crew began the arduous task of withdrawing the 114 tubes that, joined together, formed the nearly 2,300 feet of metal shaft. Disassembling the shaft, which was divided into 20-foot segments, each weighing 400 pounds, would take six hours.

  As aides kept him updated throughout the morning, President Piñera was consumed with another urgent matter: his eighty-seven-year-old father-in-law, Eduardo Morel Chaigneau, was dying. Together with his wife, Cecilia Morel, Piñera was at Chaigneau’s bedside, telling the dying man that the miners were sending signs of life. Air Force officials readied the president’s plane. At noon, Morel stopped breathing. An hour later Piñera was rushed to the Santiago airport, and in a small plane, accompanied by his minister of the interior, Rodrigo Hinzpeter, he flew to Copiapó.

  Before Piñera arrived, the last section of drill was removed. Eduardo Hurtado looked at the muddy piping and saw an orange splotch on the shaft, above the drill bit. A message? Wiping away the mud, Hurtado grabbed a gallon jug of bottled water and poured it over the drill, dousing Golborne as well. “Sorry, Minister,” said Hurtado, as he cleaned the shaft to reveal a crude orange stain. “That mark is not ours,” said Hurtado. “Minister, this is a sign of life.”

  At 2 pm, Golborne inspected the tube. Hearing a distant clanging had encouraged the minister, but here was hand-painted evidence of survivors. Seconds later, as the drill bit emerged completely, the men saw a yellow plastic bag tied to the tip of the drill. It was wound in cables and the rubber elastic from Sepúlveda’s underwear. The workers unraveled the cables and peeled away layers of muddy plastic from the sodden package. Golborne opened the small shredded pieces of paper as if they were delicate gifts. He began to read aloud from pages torn out of a notebook. A message from the deep. “ ‘The drill broke through at [level] forty-four . . . in the corner of the ceiling, on the right side . . . some water came down. We are in the shelter. . . . may God bring you light, greetings, Mario Gómez.’ ”

  On the other side was more writing. Golborne again read aloud to the hushed crowd. “ ‘Dear Lily, patience, I want to get out of here soon. . . .’ ” He continued reading in silence, and then announced, “This is personal.” Golborne carefully gathered the scraps of the letter and, together with Sougarret, prepared to board a pickup and drive down the hill. Protocol weighed heavily on both men; they were determined to brief the families before the news leaked.

  Francisco Poyanco, a technician on the drill rig, was stacking the metal piping coming up from the hole. The very last tube, in which Golborne had found the note, was dripping with mud and earth from below. Poyanco began to gather the nylon bags and cables that had held Gómez’s note. Half buried in the mess, a lump of tape stood out. Poyanco picked it up and discovered another small tightly wrapped package—another note from the buried men. Poyanco was thrilled, thinking it was a souvenir he could take home. As he unfolded the note, however, Poyanco felt chills—“Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33.” In clear red letters, e
venly spaced and calmly written, was the proof of salvation: all the men were alive.

  Poyanco ran toward Golborne, carrying the scrap of paper he had found in the mud. He began yelling that all of the men were alive. Hurtado heard the cries. Golborne paused, then seeing that Poyanco had a note, told him to read it aloud. The thirty-year-old assistant unfolded the note and read aloud the seven words: “Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33.” (“We are all right in the shelter, the 33 of us.”) The drill site erupted. Like spectators at a soccer match after a spectacular goal, helmeted engineers thrust their arms skyward, jumping up and down and hugging one another.

  The reaction of Cristian Gonzalez, twenty-two, a mining technician working for his father at the San José mine, was instantaneous: he ran down the hill, into Camp Hope, screaming, “They are alive! They are alive! They sent a message that they are all fine, but they can’t tell us anything!” Later, Gonzalez defended his breach of protocol. “I know these miners. I worked seven months in that mine and am close friends with Claudio Acuña and José Ojeda,” he said. “I promised their families that as soon as I heard anything, I would tell them.”

  DAY 17: INSIDE THE MINE

  With the drill gone, Zamora took charge of reinforcing the roof. It was the same task he had completed in those last nerve-racking hours on August 5, when he had sensed that a collapse was imminent but was ordered to keep working. Zamora cleaned debris from the roof with a renewed passion—salvation depended on the integrity of this solitary hole. An earthquake could seal them off again. Every man inside the tunnel and every rescuer above understood that the miners were far from being rescued. Right now, the urgent mission was getting nutrients and medicine to the bottom of the mine.

  DAY 17: RESCUE OPERATION

  At 2:30 pm President Piñera arrived at Camp Hope, adding yet another level of urgency and expectation to the already frenetic scene. After a brief meeting with family members, Piñera waded into a crowd of journalists. Flanked by family members and Senator Isabel Allende—the daughter of former President Salvador Allende—Piñera held up a clear plastic bag containing the note from the trapped miner José Ojeda and read aloud the message: “Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33.” “This came out today, from the gut of the mountain, the deepest part of this mine,” said the president, barely able to keep his eyes open in the sharp desert sun. “It is a message from our miners that says they are alive, they are united, they are waiting to see the light of day, to hug their families.”

  Carolina Lobos, who had spent seventeen days sleeping with her trapped father’s black-and-white Nike T-shirt, said, “I cried when I heard they were okay. . . . Everybody was yelling, ‘They are alive!’ ‘They are alive!’ I was in shock. I called my mom and said, ‘Mom, they are alive! Bye.’ . . . I cried from happiness. I hugged Kristian Jahn [a government official overseeing the psychologists]. He was the handkerchief for all my tears.”

  Camp Hope became a delirious scene of tears, smiles, hugs and waving flags. In a spontaneous charge, hundreds of family members surged up the hill to stand among the thirty-three flags that had long symbolized their faithful vigil. Each flag bore the handwritten name of a miner. Each flagpole was surrounded by a wreath of melted candle wax. As they bellowed out the Chilean national anthem, President Piñera—part of the crowd—joined in.

  In minutes, the message sped throughout Chile. Strangers hugged on the subway and in the streets. The miners are alive! All of them! Drivers tooted their horns. Thousands of people flooded the streets of Santiago, heading to Plaza Italia, the usual site of soccer celebrations. It was as if the nation had won the World Cup—a joyous, patriotic uprising.

  While the nation celebrated, the rescue team scrambled to outline long-term priorities. No one was satisfied with just one paloma tube down to the miners. Three separate boreholes were needed. Maybe more. An earthquake or a cave-in could quickly collapse the one fragile link they now maintained—a disaster that would send the rescue back to Day 1 and the miners to almost certain death, as the men had no reserve food supplies. Paloma 1 was quickly designated the delivery chute for food and water. The second hole would deliver enriched oxygen, water and electricity. The oxygen line was designed to pump the cavern with cold air, in an effort to lower the suffocating hot temperature. It would also deliver a permanent fiber-optic link that would allow the men to communicate with their loved ones face-to-face. The third hole was designed to come through far from the men’s living quarters. This would be the hole used for an eventual escape. Though it was not clear how the men would be extracted, one theory had the rescuers first drilling a borehole and then widening it out so that it was large enough for the men to squeeze up through it. That option was deliberately separated from the other, more day-to-day functions. For the rescue shaft, the rescue team aimed for the roof of a vehicle workshop, some 1,200 feet above the men’s main living quarters. It was a larger target and would provide a staging ground for the final rescue. Despite the long-term plans, everyone knew that they were far from that fantastic moment. For now the men needed medicine, food and a survival plan.

  Had the miners been trapped a generation earlier, their communications would have been limited to handwritten letters and a telephone. Now engineers carefully lowered a video camera to the bottom of the shaft to gather information on the condition of the miners.

  DAY 17: INSIDE THE MINE

  While they waited for signs from above, the men peered into the shaft. Their lanterns illuminated a wet tunnel that quickly swallowed up the light. Beyond 30 feet they could see nothing. Water dripped down on them as they crowded around, continuously peering upward. A current of cooler air drifted down through the hole, the second welcome arrival from above. All the men were now united. Hugging and wiping away the sweat, they were already far removed from the panic and terror of the preceding days. No food had arrived, but hunger had long ago waned and disappeared. Now the men were filled with a joyous anticipation, an answer to their prayers, a renewed faith that they would have a second life.

  The men began to speculate—what would be sent down first? A hot meal? Soap and shampoo? A fresh toothbrush? An instruction manual for survival? Each man began to let his imagination run free; even the ability to fantasize about simple pleasures, small treats and deliveries from above had nourished the men’s collective spirit.

  Three hours later a small light began to descend: a tiny object was being lowered to them. The men crowded around the hole, staring up and wondering aloud about this historic first delivery. “I thought it was a shower at first,” said Pablo Rojas as he described a tube with a bulbous structure at one end. When the object popped through the roof, it was clearly a high-tech electronic device, but no one had ever seen anything like it. The mini camera was immediately lowered to the floor. Like a robotic insect, a lens cap flipped open and the camera began to rotate and rise—a remote-controlled video camera but what about the sound? Could this machine hear?

  Pablo Rojas approached the camera. “What is this damn thing?” he wondered, putting his face close so he could inspect the rotating camera that was now rising off the floor. Luis Urzúa, the shift foreman, started talking to the machine: “If you can hear me, raise the camera,” said Urzúa.

  The men waited. The camera went down. The men laughed, giddy from a combination of adrenaline and excitement. For twenty minutes the camera whirled and recorded, then it began to rise slowly. Pablo Rojas watched the camera disappear up the shaft. “I wanted to hang on to it and have it pull me out, but I didn’t fit.”

  DAY 17: RESCUE OPERATION ABOVE GROUND

  As the world awoke to the story of the Chilean miners, back at the mine, engineers were furiously trying to fix the audio function on the video camera. The delicate machine had been damaged by contact with water. The audio was gone.

  The images broadcast back to the men at the communications office were eerie and hard to decipher. Dim lights shone in the background, obviously the head lamps of miners who had crowded close to the camera.
But the low light conditions made the resolution so grainy that the rescuers could only guess at the faces they were seeing. Despite the frustration at the lack of audio, the men appeared to be standing and moving about. For every question answered, a dozen more popped up: What were the injuries? Had any of the men been badly crushed? After seventeen days with minimal food, had they developed life-threatening illnesses?

  Two hours later, the video was shown to family members at Camp Hope, projected onto the side of a tent. The black-and-white images were barely decipherable. At an odd angle, with only a fraction of a face visible, a pair of eyes drifted into view. The curious and haunting eyes of Florencio Ávalos. Or was it Luis Urzúa? Or Esteban Rojas? Various families claimed the eyes belonged to their lost miner. Indeed, the dark, blurry images were so generic it allowed for the instant substitution of subconscious thoughts. A Rorschach test at 2,300 feet.

  With the anguish and desperation temporarily soothed by a mood of empowerment, Camp Hope became a shrine to the living.

  With bonfires sparkling, music pounding, Camp Hope came alive with dancing long past midnight. At 2 am, while family members stomped and celebrated on the rocky dance floor, volunteers handed out hard-boiled eggs, sausages and grilled chicken. Paul Vásquez, a comic nationally known as “El Flaco” (“Skinny Man”), gave a stand-up performance, while Juan Barraza, a local priest, offered a prayer session in an adjacent tent.

  Barraza was encouraged by the scene. “To know that they were alive allowed everyone to express many emotions that had been held back. It was like opening a pressure cooker. Now everyone was saying, ‘We won’t go home without them.’ ”