33 Men

by Jonathan Franklin

  With both drilling machines now stalled, the miners were serenaded by the most fearful sound in the mine: silence. Not a single machine was heading toward them.

  DAY 37: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11

  With Plan A advancing slower than expected and Plan B stuck—perhaps fatally—a wave of gloom and fear swarmed over the camp. Were the miners cursed? Was all this rescue effort nothing more than a prelude to the inevitable death of yet another group of mine workers? The government was determined to keep the rescue effort moving forward and had already invited a third rescue team to the San José mine—Plan C.

  The arrival of Plan C, a massive petroleum drilling operation, kicked off a brief flurry of cheers and flag waving at Camp Hope. The press corps—now chafing at their inability to watch the rescue effort firsthand—rushed to film the convoy of forty-two trucks inching up the gravel roads, loaded with tubes, towers, generators and so much machinery that the platform to support it was 328 feet long, the size of a soccer field.

  The rig was donated by Precision Drilling, a Canadian company that specializes in deep perforations to find pools of oil. The rig had been stored for two years in a warehouse in Iquique, a northern port city a thousand miles north of Copiapó.

  With scrap copper now reaching a record price of $6 a kilo, copper crime was on the rise worldwide. In parts of the United States, home owners began spray painting messages to thwart potential robbers: “No copper, only TVC.” Entrepreneurial types were melting down pennies minted before 1984. The value of the copper was far higher than the penny, leading the Financial Times to publish an article entitled “Melting Coins Could Start Making Cents.” Engineers on Plan C were dismayed to discover thieves had broken into the Iquique storage facility and stripped the copper from the cables of their rig, removing the sophisticated circuitry. “It was a little frustrating to come back to Chile. . . . Some electrical cables were stolen,” said Shaun Robstad, the lead engineer. “All the cords were gone, so my electrician got on the phone and started ordering cable. It was all put together in Houston. . . . A lot of people worked weekends and nights to get it done.”

  DAY 38: SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 12

  As dawn broke on Day 38, Golborne and the Codelco team began to consider the unthinkable: abandoning Plan B.

  The original rescue plan had called for drilling three separate boreholes to the men: one for the palomas with food and supplies, one for telecommunications, and a third for water and fresh air. Plan B had cannibalized one of the three original boreholes, forcing the rescue workers to combine the telecommunications with the water and enriched air. Now only two tubes were left. None of the engineers were willing to risk losing another borehole to accommodate the experimental plans of los gringos from Pennsylvania. If the tungsten drill could not be removed, a new shaft would have to be started from scratch. It would be a blind shot, a drill without a borehole to guide it down.

  At the helm of Plan B, Jeff Hart was going stir-crazy. He had flown halfway around the world to help save the trapped miners, and now for the third consecutive day, the drilling was stalled. The fragments of metal drill bits at the bottom of the mine were wedged tight. Repeated attempts to haul, pry or drag them out had failed. Hart was frustrated. A clock ticked inside his head. Every day of delay meant another day of suffering for the thirty-three miners.

  Meanwhile, André Sougarret worked to coordinate the installation of Plan C, the gigantic oil-drilling rig that was being assembled in record time. Instead of the normal eight weeks, Plan C was being installed in less than half that. Still, it felt torturously slow in the context of Operation San Lorenzo.

  With time spiraling away from a solution, Igor cajoled his way into a brief afternoon audience with Golborne. The exhausted minister listened to the young engineer’s description of the Spider and approved it immediately. The Spider was sent down; pressure from above forced the teeth in. Slowly the Spider was reeled back up. At the surface, a metalworker with a blowtorch cut into the Spider’s cocoon, slicing away the teeth one by one. In a spray of sparks, he removed the final tooth and out rolled the Spider’s catch: a tungsten hammerhead. The gathered engineers cheered. Plan B might still stand a chance of success. It wouldn’t have to start over from scratch, without a guiding borehole, as had been feared. Still, Plan B had lost time—and the enemy wasn’t just the mountain; every hour counted. Now the rescue workers were losing sleep and growing beards, too.

  Deep below ground the miners sensed the chaos above. Every time a drill stopped, silence filled their world—a terrifying void that renewed doubts that they would ever be rescued.

  NINE

  TV REALITY

  DAY 41: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15

  With hot food, clean clothes, cots that raised them off the floor and a miniature projector that brought them TV and movies, the men migrated from the harsh edges of physical survival to a more nebulous state—the monotony of waiting with no clear end point. A pipe with fresh water delivered 106 quarts of fresh water a day. Four thousand cubic feet of cooled, fresh air were pumped down to the men each hour, but the temperature inside the mine did not budge, stuck at a sweltering 90 degrees Fahrenheit with 95 percent humidity.

  Twenty days after the arrival of food, the men had a new problem: “We had no garbage before that—quite the contrary, we were looking for garbage,” said Samuel Ávalos. Men filled barrels with rubbish, then used heavy machinery to dump the refuse at the lowest levels of the mine. The lack of proper bathroom facilities was also becoming more and more of a problem. A slight breeze from below began to fill their living quarters with the smell of stale urine. It became so unbearable that the men began to urinate in the empty plastic water bottles, screw the top back on, and then deposit the now refilled containers in the garbage barrel. The air improved dramatically.

  While rescue engineers and psychologists worked overtime to keep the men occupied with tasks, the miners nonetheless began to slack off. Chores went unattended. Discipline was slipping away.

  “What really screwed us up was the TV. When the TV arrived, it ruined the communications; it was a big problem,” said Sepúlveda. “Some of the guys would just stare at it; they were hypnotized and watched it all day.”

  The miners began watching the nightly news and were starting to discover the global impact of their drama. Sepúlveda’s wildly heralded narration of the first video had won him millions of fans above ground, but deep in the mine this adulation ignited a simmering brew of jealousy. In order to escape the pressure, Sepúlveda began to disappear from the main living quarters. For hours he would wander the tunnels, stopping to pray.

  “When we lost control or humility, I would go alone into the dark,” he said. “I would find my own spot. You have no idea what it is like to be alone in there. I felt at peace.”

  Fights and arguments erupted from the constant battle over which channel to watch. Urzúa called up and complained that the TV was “destroying the organization” and asked for the broadcasts to be limited to news, some soccer and the occasional movie.

  Many of the rituals the men had developed during the grueling first seventeen days were now fraying. With food and comforts arriving daily from above ground, the bonds of solidarity that had kept the men alive in the direst moments began to break. “During the different shifts, the men would go around and check on those who were asleep. They would put their hand on the chest of every sleeping man to make sure he was breathing. Because of carbon monoxide in the mine, they wanted to make sure he was alive,” said Pedro Gallo, the phone technician, who spoke with the men by telephone daily. “These were known as the ‘Guardian Angels.’ . . . They were vigilant in protecting the men who were asleep, but when the TV began, they stopped doing the rounds. . . . They preferred to watch television.”

  Regular mail now reached the miners. Each man waited hopefully for a paloma delivery with his name on it and a letter inside. But it soon became clear that not all letters were being delivered in a timely manner. “There was no way to have a co
nversation; the answers were always four or five letters behind,” said the miner Claudio Yañez.

  Family members began to wonder about the fate of letters that rescue officials described as “lost.” “Some of the letters were simply crumpled up and thrown out,” said Dr. Romagnoli, who was clear that he did not approve of the measure. “That was done in the building where the psychologists were working.”

  The younger psychologists allegedly began to file letters with the Ministry of Health, in protest of what they saw as unethical censorship.

  During phone calls with family members the miners accused the government of sabotaging family relationships. They began to fantasize about putting Iturra, the psychologist, in prison. “They asked me if there were any police up here at la paloma who could lock Iturra up. They said they would send the police rocks filled with gold, as a prize. I told them, ‘Sure, consider it done,’ ” said Dr. Romagnoli as he described the miners’ desperate attempt to eliminate Iturra from their lives. The miners believed their plan might work: “They sent up the rocks.”

  Frustration over the days of delayed and lost letters finally reached a head when Alex Vega, one of the quieter and more reserved miners, exploded as he spoke to Iturra about the censorship. In a fit of swearing and insults, Vega threatened Iturra, telling him that in order to communicate with his family, he would climb out of the mine. To his colleagues below, Vega described how he was going to attempt to scale a series of cracks and narrow chambers in the mountainside that the men were convinced weaved and rose to the surface. It was a mission they all recognized meant almost certain death. But, in the end, without professional climbing equipment, food and long-term lighting, not even Vega was willing to follow through on his threat.

  Above ground, despite the battles, Iturra continued with his controversial system of rewards and punishments. “They should not have been given TV, that should have been traded for something,” the bearded psychologist said with frustration in his voice. When the miners behaved well, they were given extra TV and mood music. Other treats—including live images of the topside world—were held in reserve. Should the miners deserve a reward or become unduly feisty, Iturra was ready with either a carrot or a stick. The miners began to rebel against what they saw as oppressive treatment. In a show of strength, they began to reject the daily psychological sessions.

  When a set of personalized leather dice games was sent down, the men protested. Three of the games had typographical errors in their names. The men sent the dice and cups topside with an angry letter.

  “The miners are like children,” said Dr. Díaz, the lead physician who said that after satisfying their primal needs, including hunger, the miners were moving up the food chain of requirements. “Now that they have food, water and sustenance, they are asking for clothing, and we are seeing them rise to a third level: demanding that the food have an enjoyable taste. The other day they sent back dessert—the peaches—because one of them didn’t like the taste.”

  In response, Iturra’s team meted out more punishments. “When that happens, we have to say, okay, you don’t want to speak with psychologists? Perfect. That day you get no TV, there is no music—because we administer these things. And if they want magazines? Well, they have to speak to us. It is a daily arm wrestle,” said Dr. Díaz. “NASA told us that we have to receive the arrows so that they don’t start shooting the arrows at each other. So we are putting our chest forward; now they can target the doctors and psychologists.”

  Openly critical of what he saw as a provocative strategy, Dr. Figueroa, the psychiatrist hired to watch the operation, accused the mental health team of treating the miners like laboratory rats. First they try out unusual protocols, he said, then they study the results as if it were an experiment. “It’s dangerous to implement psychological intervention without the consent of the miners,” said Figueroa. “They are meddling in their lives. . . . This is an attack on the dignity of the miners. . . . The fact that they can hold out doesn’t mean they are invincible or especially resistant. . . . They are very fragile.”

  Iturra was undeterred by the rising criticism. “We removed the first page of the newspaper and the miners went crazy and were screaming,” he said, defending the censorship. The newspaper article described a mining accident in the Copiapó region where four mine workers had been blown to pieces by an accidental detonation of explosives. Iturra said, “One dead miner had the same last name as one of the miners down there; maybe he was a relative? I did not have time to check that out and we couldn’t let them find out that way—by reading the paper.”

  “Disinformation and uncertainty are two of the worst psychological aggressions for humans,” wrote Figueroa in a blistering critique of the San José psychological team. “Accurate, timely, honest and realistic information is essential. The benefit of restricting information delivery because of concerns about giving them bad news is not supported by empirical evidence and can compromise confidence in rescuers.” But Figueroa also acknowledged that Iturra had a nearly impossible task. Miners were known to be among the groups least receptive to psychological counseling. They tended to hide their weaknesses, said Figueroa, who stressed the difficulty in bringing mental health to a group that was stubbornly opposed not just to Iturra but to everything he stood for.

  At the miners’ video conference with their families, the joy of face-to-face contact was now clouded by a bitter sensation that the psychologists were preventing any semblance of normal communications. While family members assured Victor Zamora that they had written him fifteen letters, he had received only one, and he began to think his family was hiding something. “Victor is very upset they are not delivering the letters,” said Zamora’s nephew. “He is about to explode. This is all so disgusting. None of the letters are arriving.”

  Inevitably the media began to question the censorship. During an interview with a Chilean broadcaster, Iturra defended the practice. “He said the opinion of the families did not matter, that the miners were ‘his children,’ ” said Pedro Gallo, paraphrasing the conversation.

  Later that same evening, a group of twelve miners gathered to watch the nightly news. As usual, Pedro Gallo, the telecommunications inventor, sent the video feed down to the trapped men. He was also sitting in front of a monitor, keeping tabs on the underground world. He was stunned by their reaction to Iturra’s comments. “I saw their faces when the news came on and they heard Iturra. . . . Then the phone started ringing.”

  Irate, Sepúlveda called up and demanded to speak to Iturra, who had gone home for the day. Gallo knew that a battle royal was imminent. “Mario didn’t say anything to me, but I could tell from his voice he was very upset.”

  Gallo explained that Iturra had broken a sacred miner code: he insulted the family.

  The unity of the miners was now strained by different individual priorities, sleeping and group work shifts. The miners continued their daily get-togethers including prayer and the noontime group meeting, but fewer men participated. The necessities of survival were now being tempered by the relative comforts provided by the rescue team. In crucial moments, however, like the rejection of censorship, the miners still spoke with a single voice.

  DAY 42: THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16

  In the morning, Sepúlveda called and asked to speak to Iturra. It was an urgent request. Iturra came on the line. Gallo again was front row and knew fireworks were about to explode. Sepúlveda accused Iturra of abusing the rights of the miners. After a halfhearted defense, Iturra became quiet. Sepúlveda went on the attack once more. “If you keep shitting inside our home, we will remove you. This is your last chance,” said Sepúlveda. He made it clear that he was going to report the incident to Mining Minister Golborne.

  In a series of phone calls to political authorities throughout the rest of the day, the miners launched a counterattack. “He was treating us like little kids,” said miner Alex Vega. “Of course we had to protest against the censorship.”

  Having just barely recovered th
eir strength, the men now said they would not accept food or supplies. “We told them that if they didn’t stop the censorship, we were not going to receive la paloma and would stop eating the food,” said Barrios. “Everybody was against the psychologist; he did a terrible job. If he was not removed, we were not going to eat. We’d just leave the palomas filled with food,” said Samuel Ávalos. “Like good miners, we pulled a strike.”

  After almost starving to death, the men were now threatening a hunger strike.

  While the miners complained to the government, there was only so much the government could do. Iturra had been hired by the privately owned workers’ health insurance company, ACHS. “We tried to fire Iturra, to dump him,” said a high-ranking official in the Piñera government who asked not to be named. “But they threatened us, saying that if they did not control the psychological counseling, then they would not cover the medical parts of the rescue. We were trapped.”

  For his part Iturra called the battle cathartic. “I told them that I was going to be their father, if they want to get angry at me, get angry, but I am going to be their father and I will not abandon them, I am here and I am trustworthy.”

  Tensions with Iturra were becoming unmanageable. Dr. Díaz encouraged Iturra to take a break and suggested a week’s sabbatical from the intense routines. After more than a month at the site, Iturra, straining under the pressure from the miners, lack of sleep, and the responsibility for maintaining the sanity of the thirty-three lives on his watch, agreed and went to his home in Caldera, a fishing port less than an hour’s drive from the mine.

  Claudio Ibañez, a psychologist from Santiago who had been assisting Iturra, took over the day-to-day counseling. With the miners rebellious and empowered, it was a tense time. With weeks—perhaps months—of captivity still ahead, it was crucial to keep the men healthy and calm. The rescue effort was dragging. The drills were advancing but hampered by technical difficulties. Ibañez, an easygoing man with an extensive background in what he calls “positive psychology,” upended the rules. There would be minimal censorship. La paloma would not be searched nor letters revised.