The food paloma was never left unattended. Even at the most stressful moments the men assured that their lifeline was under strict watch. Now they had decided to migrate several hundred feet higher in the tunnels, to the workshop, where the drill was about to break through.
The men gathered in anxious anticipation. So many things had gone wrong: broken drills, errant boreholes, the collapse itself. The men were incredulous. Was salvation really as close as it sounded? The men huddled in the tunnel, 160 feet from where they prayed the drill would rip through. A mixture of mud and water poured into the ramp.
Alex Vega started writing. He shielded a notebook from the dripping water and began to chronicle the historic moment, a minute-by-minute account addressed to his wife. A whirl of dust, the sharp noise of hammers pounding and flying debris filled the air. The miners all stared like children waiting for Santa Claus to come down the chimney. Their eyes were fixed as, drenched in sweat, helmets fastened and hands covered with thick work gloves, the men prepared for a final mission.
There was little they could do besides watch. Pedro Cortés spoke by telephone to the engineers above, providing minute-by-minute updates that were translated and then relayed to Jeff Hart, the driller, who adjusted the speed and pressure on the drill. The flying debris and raucous noise kept them from creeping too close.
The miners listened to the slower revolutions of the drill as it drew closer. And then the sound changed to the scream of metal fighting metal, an uneven screeching that set the men’s teeth on edge. Jeff Hart had no option but to try to grind through the mess. Everyone was remembering the earlier incident when the hammer had sheared off, causing a four-day delay.
The drilling resumed and the drill again jammed. Again, that shearing sound. Metal roof bolts on the inner ceiling of the cavern were entangled with the hammerhead. Pedro Cortés stayed in phone contact with the engineers above. They told him the drill was less than a yard away.
Above ground, Jeff Hart slowed the drill. If he advanced too fast, the drill might pass straight through the roof and become jammed; wrenching the bit loose might shatter the fragile sections of the tunnel. The final inches were painstaking. With Sougarret, Golborne and a growing crowd of rescue workers and government officials clustered around, Hart stopped repeatedly to check the video shot from below. Like air traffic controllers guiding in a floundering flight, the miners worked and prayed for the safe arrival of the drill.
Underground, the sound was deafening. Even with earplugs and a second layer of protection in the form of earphones, the roar of the drill chewing and pounding the rock was painfully loud. This time the drill overpowered the bolts and at 8 am, it broke through.
As the nub of the drill appeared through the roof of the workshop, a massive cloud of dust filled the caverns. Many of the men had a flashback to the first cave-in, as the dust cut off their vision. Now, the dust storm was a glorious sign of freedom. The miners below hugged and hooted.
Then the word came from below: the drill was through! Workers at Plan B were slow to grasp that the mission had been completed. Hart joked, “I thought it was my heart exploding.” Golborne and Sougarret began hugging. Then a champagne cork popped. A truck horn wailed. And finally the Plan B platform was filled with hugging and jumping helmeted workers. The men embraced and locked arms around each other’s shoulders. They danced in circles. Throughout the valley, a cacophony of horns, bells and yells filled the air. After two months, the rescue tunnel had reached the men.
Hart immediately began to pack up. His job was done. Now it was time to let the Chileans take over. Wandering through Camp Hope in his oil-stained work overalls, he gazed in wonder at the hole he had drilled to the trapped miners’ remote refuge. Hart seemed baffled by his instant celebrity status. Women hugged him; reporters shoved and grappled to record his every word. Yet Hart was unable to explain his talent. With eyes that said, “You will never understand,” he looked at the reporters and stated, “I am a driller. If you are not a driller you can’t understand me. It is a vibration that comes up from the ground. I feel it in my feet, and then I know where the drill is.” Had Hart’s drill slipped off course by 20 inches, he would have missed the tunnel. He had thrown a bull’s-eye. Like a long-distance sniper, he was perfect.
Hart described in detail how the final moments of the drilling operation had been a joint effort with the miners below feeding him live video footage. Asked what he would tell the miners, Hart laughed and said, “Two days ago we sent them a message: ‘We will be there.’ Now I would say, ‘Follow us!’ ”
Camp Hope erupted in joy. Rescue workers in hard hats went from tent to tent hugging family members. Family members of the trapped men were now letting their hope loose. “I am sending him tranquillity and comfort. The worst is over,” said Alonso Gallardo, thirty-four years old, a nephew of trapped miner Mario Gómez.
“We are going to have a huge party in the neighborhood,” said Daniel Sanderson, twenty-seven, who slept for only one hour during the night as he awaited the fate of his two best friends, who were trapped. Sanderson, who also worked in the San José mine, said that despite the dangers and the extreme trauma of being trapped underground for weeks, his friends would continue to work as miners. “They already wrote me that they are going to look for new mining jobs. We are all miners.”
“These are for everyone,” said Juan Gonzalez, thirty-nine years old, as he unloaded forty crates of fresh avocados at his family’s tent inside Camp Hope. “I just want to hug them,” he said in reference to Renán and Florencio Ávalos, his two brothers who were both trapped. “I would tell them to stay calm, we are all waiting here.”
“If it is Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday it does not matter,” said President Sebastián Piñera. “What matters is to rescue them alive and rescue them safely. And for that, we will spare no effort.” What Piñera did not clarify was whether the rescue plan now included lining the entire shaft with metal tubing or just portions of the shaft. The tubing had long been considered an essential part of the rescue operation, a guarantee that the walls of the shaft would be smooth enough to provide an uninterrupted and easy course for the wheels of the Phoenix to follow. Now the tubing was being reevaluated. Engineers feared that the slight bends and twists in the shaft would complicate the installation of the tubing. What if a single segment buckled and became jammed? Was it riskier to line or not to line? That became the question.
Minister Golborne also preached caution. “This is an important achievement, but we still have not rescued anybody. This rescue won’t be over until the last person leaves the mine.”
Even as he spoke, family members gathered around the embers of campfires, ate breakfast with smiles and shared coffee and hugs with strangers. Hundreds of foreign journalists rushed to file the news that Los 33 had moved one step closer to freedom.
Below ground, at the bottom of the mine, Claudio Yañez photographed the rescue shaft, although it was impossible to see more than a few yards up before darkness swallowed all detail. Together with Samuel Ávalos, they made a home video, reaching with the camera into the shaft, as if by sheer effort alone and a leap of imagination they might be instantly delivered to that lost world above. The rescue shaft was 28 inches across, large enough to deliver a welcome breeze of cold air into the tunnel. The men marveled at the pleasure of semi-fresh, cool air. The rescue shaft was like a crude system of air-conditioning. The men could not know that the same rescue hole that was so close to delivering them to safety was also a death trap.
The cooler air filtering in shifted the temperature inside the fragile mine. Cold air caused the walls of the mountain to contract. This violent change in temperature, so pleasing to the men, had the effect of destabilizing the entire mine.
DAY 66: SUNDAY, OCTOBER 10
More than ever the men felt trapped. Time seemed to stop. With no sun, no dawn, no way to mark the time, they would regularly ask each other if it was morning yet.
Then, at 6 am, the early-morning peace was sha
ttered by first one huge rippling roar, then another and another. “Richard [Villarroel] kicked my feet and woke me up. He said the mountain was coming to get us,” said Samuel Ávalos. “I thought we were doomed. This whole thing is coming down. If it does, we are gone. The whole mountain was so unstable. Anything could happen. It did not stop. Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow, pow, pow! It kept exploding.”
Luis Urzúa called up to Sougarret. “The mountain is cracking, making lots of noise,” said Urzúa, who along with the rest of the men had become alarmed as dust and a strange wind blew through the tunnels. Sougarret tried to assure them that the cave-in had happened far above them, that they were in no direct danger.
When Samuel Ávalos heard the collapse of the mountain, he was convinced that this was the final act—that the entire entrapment had been an inevitable road toward death. Ávalos was certain that the mine would come crashing down, that the mine was a living being filled with vengeance and determination to trap men inside.
Omar Reygadas, a fifty-six-year-old miner and union leader, was sure that the cracking and explosion of rock were a message from above. To Reygadas’s ears, the cacophony of cracks and blistering snaps as rock let loose were nothing more than God’s voice. “I am Christian. I thought it was a warning, that God had done a miracle for us and we had to keep believing in him. To thank God for giving us life and thank him for letting us out. The mountain was exploding. That we had promises to keep and we swore to be better people, and I think that the mountain was reminding us to keep our word. Others were saying, ‘The mine does not want us to leave. The mine wants to keep a single miner here.’ ”
Richard Villarroel remained calm. He lay in bed, gathering strength for the journey up, confident that nothing could stop them now. He was determined to see his wife give birth to their son Richard Jr. The due date was less than two weeks away. Having survived the collapse, the starvation, the heat and the humidity, Villarroel felt invincible. All the cracking and the groaning of the mountain was unable to shake his sense that destiny had brought him this far because he was meant to survive.
By noon, the cracking slowed and all but stopped. But even the silence was a frightening reminder that the mountain was pausing between movements.
Few of the men slept that night.
TWELVE
THE FINAL PREPARATIONS
DAY 67: MONDAY, OCTOBER 11
The miners began preparing for the arrival of the rescue capsule. Spotlights ringed the area, making this section of the workshop look like a miniature stage. The shaft itself was both unremarkable and miraculous. At first glance, the rescue shaft was nearly invisible, just another dark splotch amid the folds and uneven geometric cuts of the ceiling. But the men visited the hole like it was a sacred shrine, making daily, sometimes hourly, pilgrimages. This section of the tunnels was high above the men’s living quarters and was usually empty. With the drilling complete, a silence filled the air, the only sound the constant splat of water drops falling to the floor.
The men talked nervously, smoked and tried to make time pass faster. They discussed their pact—a vow of silence. Each man had promised not to discuss the details of their life below. Each miner had sworn not to criticize any other miner. They were free to speak about their own experience, but not to share with the media any details about their at times fractious existence. That, the men had decided, would be saved for their collective movie.
Franklin Lobos had been at the forefront of these discussions. Lobos reminded the men to stay united. He sought to create a nonprofit foundation that would lionize the men’s accomplishments, showcase their survival and be housed in a museum dedicated to the drama. All proceeds from the movie they dreamed of would be divided into thirty-three shares, assuring that each man would benefit from the media exploitation. Known later as the “pact of silence,” the agreement was intended to protect their privacy and cover up embarrassing incidents; rumors abounded that the men had partaken in homosexual dalliances, soft drug use and the occasional fistfight. But the core of the pact was also financial. The men viewed their experience as a collective suffering that demanded that the spoils be divided equally. The pact would not survive even the first twenty-four hours.
As the critical last hours slowly ticked away, the miners pleaded for more and more cigarettes. “This is not a stop-smoking program,” said Dr. Romagnoli, as he crammed packs of cigarettes into the paloma. Asked about the irony of a personal trainer rushing deliveries of cigarettes to his patients, Romagnoli insisted, “This is a rescue mission. . . I don’t have the heart to take away their cigarettes.” The miners were nervous but in good spirits, asking Romagnoli to send down pisco, rum and mixers.
Special waterproof clothing was also sent to the miners. Custom-tailored for each man with fabric imported from Japan, the green jumpsuits were rolled up and shipped down the paloma along with clean socks, vitamins and a pair of black Oakley Radar–style sunglasses.
In a telling sign of the men’s humility, they asked for shoe polish. The men had lived like animals for weeks. Bacteria and fungus had invaded their lives, colonizing their skin. Now, with the world watching, the men sought the most basic levels of human dignity—a fresh face, clean hair and polished shoes.
Though the men were expected to be extricated at night, the sunglasses would serve to shield their eyes from the glaring floodlights now surrounding the rescue area. Family members expressed fear about another type of spotlight: the press barrage. In a poll by the Chilean newspaper La Tercera, family members said their fears of media “overexposure” outweighed their concerns about the men’s psychological and physical health.
At the paloma station on the hillside above the San José mine, Dr. Liliana Devia rehearsed the evacuation protocol by laying a sketch of the field hospital on a desk. She then moved around pieces of colored Legos as she described the medical plan, like an army general preparing the troops for battle.
“This is the first time in many weeks that the miners are going to be completely alone,” said Dr. Mañalich, the talkative Chilean health minister who feared the miners were so nervous they would suffer panic attacks during the ascent.
After numerous days of practice inside the Phoenix, a group of rescue workers were convinced that the experimental capsule was safe, solid and, although a bit cramped, not particularly uncomfortable. The idea of watching a monotonous wall of rock slide by for fifteen minutes was enough to make even the most experienced sailor seasick. The men would be advised to close their eyes if necessary. Thanks to Dr. Romagnoli and a sophisticated wireless transmission of vital signs, should any of the miners go into a panic attack, the indications would pop up on the laptop and Pedro Gallo or a doctor would try to calm the miner down.
A host of requests from the miners for specialized soundtracks and songs for their ascent helped assuage fears that the men would be unable to handle the fifteen-minute solitary voyage. Victor Zamora pleaded to have Bob Marley’s “Buffalo Soldier” blasting through the capsule as he surfaced.
If all went according to schedule, the men would be removed at the rate of one every ninety minutes, a roughly two-day marathon in which the already flagging endurance of the entire team would be tested.
The Copiapó hospital, where the men would be taken via helicopter, was bracing for a siege. Security barriers were erected and neighbors cashed in, renting out overgrown backyards to satellite crews and broadcasters around the world. Windows in two wards were taped over and heavy curtains installed to shield the men’s sensitive eyes from both sunlight and the invasive probing of long-distance lenses.
Authorities pleaded with the media to give the men time alone with their loved ones, but given the appetite for the story and the intense competition for the first interviews, few reporters seemed willing to comply. In addition to stories alleging homosexual activity and drug use in the mine, the miners were expected to be grilled about their often complicated home lives above ground. The mélange of lovers, wives and a recently discovered love child ma
de the arrival anything but relaxing. “I was waiting for them to ask us who wanted to go up,” said Sepúlveda. “I think about ten of us would have chosen to stay underground.”
In the center of Copiapó, less than a mile from the hospital, hundreds of miners protested and marched, snarling traffic. These men worked for San Esteban Primera, the holding company and owner of the San José mine and several other local mines and processing plants. While the press and lawsuits were focused on the thirty-three trapped workers, another 250 workers were out of work and out of the limelight. They were demanding that their salaries be paid and paperwork finished so they could look for new jobs.
Blowing horns and carrying signs reading “The 33 are fine, the others are screwed,” the men tried to draw attention to the broader consequences of the San José collapse.
“They will get no international trips, no presents, no TV invitations, exclusive interviews or special treatment,” read an editorial in the local newspaper El Atacameño. “They and their families are just waiting to return to normal lives, to land dignified jobs that will let them get ahead.”
Even as the unemployed miners marched in the streets, the wives of the trapped miners were being polished for the spotlight. Copiapó mayor Maglio Cicardini had organized free spa treatments for the wives. “I decided that they should have a beauty session,” said the flamboyant mayor. As the women emerged from the salon, Cicardini said, “They all look so beautiful and striking that I doubt even their husbands will recognize them.”
Up at the mine site, the entire mountain was on full alert. Hundreds of rescue workers were preparing for jobs large and small. The Chilean Air Force had helicopter pilots ready. In the field hospital, twenty-four doctors were on call. A platoon of nurses and paramedics were manning stations to measure blood pressure, deliver glucose and conduct overall physical exams of the men.
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