Chile miners: one of the greatest ever survival stories

It ended in euphoric jubilation. But the rescue mission – Operation San Lorenzo, named after the patron saint of miners – could have gone horribly wrong.

From the moment the world discovered that the miners were alive to their final emergence at the surface, the watching world was hooked. It was the knife-edge nature of what happened at the 121-year-old mine, as they drilled down through half a mile of rock, 15 times harder than concrete, that gripped Chile and the watching world.

As a story, it had everything: nail-biting drama, tears of despair, tears of laughter. It had characters every bit as big and lovable as prime-time reality TV. You had to keep reminding yourself that this was really real. Thirty-three men entombed deep underground, their lives hanging in the balance.

As a story, it had everything: nail-biting drama, tears of despair, tears of laughter. It had characters every bit as big and lovable as prime-time reality TV. You had to keep reminding yourself that this was really real.

After the collapse of 700,000 tonnes of rock had sealed the mine shaft, they endured the longest recorded period spent underground by a group of trapped men – 69 days buried alive, the first 17 of which were spent in darkness, cut off from a world which had presumed them dead.

Despite the odds stacked against them, they’d organised themselves and buoyed each other up in an inspirational example of the indefatigability of the human spirit.

They’d survived on just half a plastic bottletop-full of tinned tuna every 24 hours – and no food at all for the last 76 hours before the drill bit came crashing into their chamber. One miner said the men were so excited when that happened, they’d hugged and kissed it!

They’d attached a message to the bit which later reached the surface. It read simply: “All 33 of us are well inside the shelter.” Later they inquired as to whether some of their colleagues who weren’t with them down below had made it out. They’d made it, they were told. And 600 metres down below the miner yelled and hugged in sheer delight to know their friends were safe.

Just minutes after his rescue, miner Ricardo Villaroel said (in an exclusive interview broadcast on Channel 4 News) offered the first insights into their shared experience below. (Subsequently, the miners have kept their cards close to their chests, despite being showered by offers from journalists. They intend to share the profits of newspaper, book, TV and movie deals.)

“We were waiting for death,” Villaroel said. “Our bodies were consuming themselves. I was getting skinnier every day. I lost 12 kilos. I was afraid I would never see my child.”

His partner is expecting his first child within the next few days.

“We were waiting for death,” Villaroel said. “Our bodies were consuming themselves. I was getting skinnier every day. I lost 12 kilos. I was afraid I would never see my child.”

“Every day we said to each other we had to be strong. And if they found us: good. If not, so be it. We could do nothing else but pray. I have never prayed before. I learned how to do it down there. I came close to God.”

First UK interview with Chilean miner – watch video

“I did not surrender to death,” he continued. “I had the strength to keep on working. I did see mates of mine who didn’t even get up that first day. They were very young and had been desperate to work in mines. They lay on the floor and didn’t get up. That was the most difficult time – to see them with no strength.”

Once the drill made it down into their refuge, everything changed. The narrow shaft – about as big as the circle you can make when you arch your hands together, fingertip to fingertip – became their lifeline, down which they sent torpedo-shaped tubes they called “paloma” – Spanish for pigeons. They were sent down soap and clothes, hot tea and food and cigarettes.

And they sent up love notes for their wives and girlfriends and extraordinary videos, broadcast across the world, of their dark, hot and claustrophobic lives, narrated by the miner they called “el Presentador” – the presenter – “Super” Mario Sepulveda.

His starring role continued when he burst out of the Phoenix capsule, whooping with joy in his eye-protecting Oakley shades, looking every bit a rock star, and winning hearts the length of Chile and across the world.

In pictures: covering the Chile miners rescue

The families gathered in Campamento Esperanza (Camp Hope) shared every twist and turn of the endurance saga. I got to know many of them over the final days we spent at Mina San Jose. They were generous with their time and courteous despite the invasive media scrum which enveloped them as journalists descended on the camp from all over the world.

The families remained resilient despite the pressures and all the dramas above ground too: there were family feuds, the unmasking of secret mistresses, a marriage proposal and a new-born baby.

Elizabeth Segovia Roja, sister of buried miner Dario Segovia Roja told me, as she looked forward to her brother’s rescue: “It will be a very special day. We’ve been here since the start and I can’t put into words how it will be that day. I will thank God for protecting him.”

I was with another of the miners’ families in Campamento Esperanza – Camp Hope – watching a big plasma screen when we saw Manuel Gonzales, a mine rescue specialist, strapping up his harness and entering the Phoenix escape pod for his journey towards the centre of the earth. To me he seemed like the bravest man in the world.

On the TV in Camp Hope, we heard the voice of a woman just 400 metres away at mission control, who was monitoring video communications with the chamber. She said just one word: “Beautiful.” And it was.

Minutes later came the incredible live pictures on grainy cave-cam, from down inside the miners’ chamber, of Gonzales clambering out of Phoenix. As a yell went up from the men, he stood there with his hands on his hips grinning. The miners were standing around cheering, in shorts and without shirts. It was 40 degrees down there.

Chile miners: miracle of San Jose – special report

On the TV in Camp Hope, we heard the voice of a woman just 400 metres away at mission control, who was monitoring video communications with the chamber. She said just one word: “Beautiful.” And it was.

Gonzales looked like a Buzz Lightyear, arriving on another planet.

People around me in Camp Hope were sobbing and hugging, tears rolling down faces. He had proved possible what many had long feared could never happen. And not long after that, the first of the miners, Florencio Avalos, went up the other way.

Less than 24 hours later we watched the last miner emerge at the surface in the company of thousands of local people – many from mining families – in the nearby Atacama Desert city of Copiapo. They went wild.

I said to one reveller that it looked like Chile had just won the World Cup. “Much better than that,” he said. “Thirty-three times better.”

Photo gallery: Look at the amazing images charting the release of the Chile 33.
Chile 33: freed miners photo gallery

The wave of undiluted jubilation spread from the drill head down to Camp Hope, below Plan B. TV cameras were drenched in sprayed champagne while confetti flew and families and mine and rescue workers embraced and danced and wept and yelled.

By then, the now-battered looking Phoenix rescue capsule, designed by the Chilean Navy with help from NASA had landed all 33 men safely on the surface. They had arrived in remarkably good shape. One had already contracted the lung disease silicosis and Super Mario was diagnosed with this in hospital. Another had pneumonia and a couple required urgent dental surgery.

Others predict problems in the month ahead as the euphoria of survival fades.

Mentally, who knows? After what they’ve all been through. The chief psychologist, Alberto Iturra Benavides told me that he did not anticipate their suffering post traumatic stress. Others predict problems in the month ahead as the euphoria of survival fades.

The day after the rescue, as the carnival continued in Copiapo and as the miners – one by one – were released from hospital, I ran into the members of the rescue team celebrating quietly together in a small beachside restaurant, 40 minutes’ drive from Mina San Jose. They belonged to the Codelco, the Chilean state mining company. And there among them was the beaming face of Manuel Gonzales, first man down, last man up.

The first thing that struck me about him was his modesty. He stressed that he was but a small cog in the wheel, that it was teamwork that had won the day; but he happily agreed to talk to me in detail about his personal observations and reflections on what he described as “an indelible experience” and one that would define his long career.

He hadn’t even told his wife and two children that he’d be going down, lest their anxiety distract him from his mission. The first his wife Lorrena and his children, Christian (16) and Carla (12), had known of it was when they saw him being strapped into the Phoenix capsule live on national TV. “When I came back out,” he laughed, she cried her eyes out and “all she wanted to do was kill me!”

Manuel said that when emerged from the capsule in the miners’ chamber, he’d felt this surge of elation. “I told them that I’d come to rescue them and that everything would be OK. I said there were 17 partners of mine up above and 17 million fellow Chileans watching on TV.”

“It was a very emotional moment when I got there because I felt the warmth of their affection,” he said. “Some of them wept. I had to contain myself because I got really emotional too. That moment was very special. They made me feel that I was their saviour. I felt that I was doing a job.”

Manuel Gonzales, when he did finally emerge himself, was embraced and congratulated by President Sebastian Pinera. But he had a serious point to make. Twenty years a miner, he’d been shocked by the dangerous conditions the men at San Jose had been forced to work in by their company, San Estaban (now bankrupt) which had profited by risking miners’ lives.

“I wanted to take this opportunity to tell the world, and Chile,” he told me, “that you can’t put profit before human life. No one anywhere should have to risk their lives for what they do.” Manuel Gonzales had completely failed to spot the irony in what he’d said, because that was exactly what he’d done.

As to the miners, well, the Chief Psychologist, Dr Benavides, told me that once you’ve confronted death, you’re changed forever. No doubt they’ll have come out very different men than the ones who clocked in for their shift on 5th August 2010.

They clocked off the longest-ever shift on 14th October, and emerged into the limelight of celebrity. None are ever likely to have to work underground again. And the wife of Mario Gomez, at 63 the oldest of the miners, told him she’ll leave him if he even thinks about doing so again.