33 Men

PROLOGUE: THE EYES OF THE WORLD

ONE
BURIED ALIVE

TWO
A DESPERATE SEARCH

THREE
STUCK IN HELL

FOUR
SPEED VS. PRECISION

FIVE
17 DAYS OF SILENCE

SIX
A BONANZA AT THE BOTTOM OF THE MINE

SEVEN
CRAWLING BACK TO LIFE

EIGHT
THE MARATHON

NINE
TV REALITY

TEN
FINISH LINE IN SIGHT

ELEVEN
THE FINAL DAYS

TWELVE
THE FINAL PREPARATIONS

THIRTEEN
THE RESCUE

FOURTEEN
FIRST DAYS OF FREEDOM

EPILOGUE: THE TRIUMPH OF HOPE

AUTHOR'S NOTE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PHOTOGRAPHS

This book is dedicated to my family, who barely saw me for the duration of this dramatic tale: Toty, my ever patient and daredevil wife, and my six precious daughters, Francisca, Susan, Maciel, Kimberly, Amy and little Zoe. And finally to my grandson Tomas, who hardly saw me.

Writing this book was a challenge and a journey, not nearly as wrenching as that lived by the thirty-three miners, but I, too, am excited to finally be at home and at peace.

Jonathan Franklin
December 2010
Santiago, Chile

On October 12, a dense dawn fog covered a packed mountainside in northern Chile. Dreamy banks of mist climbed up the slopes. The sun was still hidden over the horizon; a cold damp air rose up from the Pacific Ocean and sucked away body heat. The few figures that meandered through the makeshift camp at this early hour were ghostly silhouettes—like fleeting mirages here in the Atacama Desert, one of the world's driest locations.

In the media encampment, a maze of floodlights illuminated fields of antennae. Dozens of satellite transmitters were propped atop a field of boulders.

Huddled around a campfire, fingers and arms entwined, the Ávalos family prayed and talked in quiet reverence directly above two buried relatives: twenty-nine-year-old Renán and thirty-one-year-old Florencio Ávalos. Nine weeks earlier, on August 5, the brothers had entered the San José mine for a twelve-hour shift. By mid-afternoon a massive slab of rock—the size of a skyscraper—had sheared off the mountain and sealed them at the bottom of the mine.

For nine weeks the Ávalos family had hoped and prayed for a miracle. First to hear word that the brothers were alive and then to have them safely rescued from the depths of a mine that even on the best days was notorious for killing and maiming miners.

From the moment the mine collapsed in early August, hundreds of professional engineers, rescue workers, drillers and diggers had descended on this previously remote and deserted corner of northern Chile. They arrived to volunteer, offering their ideas, their equipment and their hard labor. Using both diplomatic channels and contacts in the business community, Chilean President Sebastián Piñera made a simple but profound call for help. He said, “We have these guys trapped at seven hundred meters [2,300 feet]. What technologies do you have that could possibly help?”

The response was overwhelming.

Now the rescue was in its final stage. In less than twenty-four hours, a rocket-shaped capsule known as the Phoenix would be slowly lowered into the earth, to the bottom of the mine. Florencio
Á
valos would be the first miner to open the door of the contraption and attempt to ride to the surface. His family knew the designation was both an honor and a
risk.

Hundreds of rescue workers had worked for months for this moment, most of them laboring in silence. All now brimmed with pride at the chance to play a small part in what was increasingly a global drama and what they all knew was a massive experiment. Never before had miners been rescued from such a depth after months of entrapment. Despite numerous theories that such a rescue was possible, everyone knew the law of averages—never great in an industry as dangerous as mining—was stacked against the probability that all the men could be rescued alive.

Named “Operation San Lorenzo”—in homage to Saint Lorenzo, the patron saint of miners—the rescue was led by Codelco, the Chilean state-owned mining company that, over the past two months, had gathered the world's most sophisticated drilling and mapping equipment.

Codelco, a modern company with profits in excess of $4.5 billion a year, had used a fleet of borrowed, rented and improvised drilling rigs to find the men, and to feed them for sixty-nine days. Now was the moment of truth. Could they pull the men to safety? From a depth more than twice as high as the Eiffel Tower? The rescue hole was so small that the miners had been instructed to exercise strenuously to make sure they would actually fit inside the capsule.

Despite the early hour, hundreds of journalists were already awake, lugging camera equipment in an effort to reserve a privileged spot for a drama that had captured the hearts and imaginations of viewers worldwide. Not since the moon landing had a technical challenge so intrigued and captivated the world. And in 2010, the wired world offered dozens of new ways to follow and comment on the proceedings.

With their heads bowed toward a scorching mound of orange embers, testament to weeks of waiting, the Ávalos family appeared oblivious to the growing commotion. They offered a few comments, then ignored the arrival of a stray cameraman. The journalist—with cables and soundman in tow—waded in for a few minutes of live broadcasting, every word transmitted to an audience around the world, and then migrated to the next family.

Behind the Ávalos family was the banner “Buried Perhaps . . . Overcome Never.” The miners' faces stared out from the sign, half hidden in the dark. As individuals, their faces were unremarkable—serious, dour and weathered. As a group, they were Los 33,
a worldwide symbol of resilience.

Throughout September and October 2010, as the rescuers drilled through a mountain of granite in search of the trapped men, the fate of Los 33 had become a collective narrative. The world's leading journalists flooded in, battling over scarce airline tickets to travel to Copiapó, a city so forgotten that when Chilean broadcasters delivered the national weather forecast, this was the only major city in Chile they simply skipped. “When the World Cup trophy toured all of Chile, they didn't stop here,” groused Copiapó mayor Maglio Cicardini, a ponytailed showman who looked like a backup rock-and-roll guitarist for ZZ Top.

Despite the worldwide interest, the cameras rarely were allowed access to either the front lines or below the surface of this worldwide tragedy. Locked behind police lines by a strict and slick public relations campaign run by Chilean President Sebastian Piñera, most reporters were reduced to two months of interviewing family members and politicians, while a world audience measured in the hundreds of millions was transfixed by a more profound story line: What was happening down
below?

Entombed in a sweltering, humid and crumbling cave, how could thirty-three miners be alive after all these weeks?

By early afternoon, the final countdown had begun. Crowds of relatives stood in awe as huge TV screens mounted on the side of motor homes and on the flaps of the press tent showed images of the rescue workers putting the final touches on the Phoenix rescue capsule. Painted the colors of the Chilean flag—blue, white and red—the Phoenix had been built on specifications developed by NASA and the Chilean Navy.

At 11
pm
, the Phoenix was ready. A winch hoisted the capsule. A yellow wheel threaded the cable and slowly rotated. The scene was hypnotic. It looked like an industrial operation from the 1930s. Hidden from view were the modern tools that made the whole operation possible, including GPS units that allowed the massive drills to find a tiny underground target, miles of fiber optic cable and wireless transmitters that relayed the miners' pulse and blood pressure to a physician's laptop.

Sixty-nine days earlier, the men had been lost underground. More than two weeks of searching had failed to find the tunnel where they were slowly starving to death. Death was so certain that the men had written goodbye letters. The government had even begun to design a white cross on the hillside to mark their tomb. Now they might be reborn, resuscitated and rescued. Could such an incredible feat actually be pulled off?

As the world held its breath, the Phoenix was slowly lowered, and then it was gone. In a land of massive earthquakes, the number of ways for the rescue to fail were too numerous to calculate. In order to work, the rescue required not only precise engineering but also a leap of faith. Specialists from around the world had been consulted throughout the rescue, helping to develop medical plans and engineering protocol. Now even the NASA team was speechless. On this mission, the manual would be written by the Chileans.