33 Men (11 page)

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, evenly 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.' ”

DAY 18: MONDAY, AUGUST 23

Following the excitement of first contact, the men prepared to eat. After days of jokes about juicy steaks, hallucinations of fresh
empanada
meat pies and visions of a banquet, the miners were ready for a feast. Instead, the initial doses of liquid were deliberately minuscule so as to nurse their bodies back to health. “They sent us tiny little plastic cups with glucose,” said Vega, “like the amount when you give a urine sample at the doctor.”

For skinny guys like Claudio Yañez, seventeen days without food had left him looking like a skeleton wrapped in a tight layer of muscles, his face gaunt.

“We expected food but it was only liquid,” said Claudio Acuña as he described the men's surprise that for the first forty-eight hours, no solid food would be permitted. The men followed orders, taking their medicines and slowly ingesting the glucose and bottled water at regular intervals.

Sepúlveda lived in a bizarre limbo. His body was still crashing, the effects of starvation worsening. Emotionally he was fragile, a stew of exhilaration from first contact; anticipation of a conversation with his wife, Katty; and sheer wonder that a drill had arrived. Sepúlveda had developed such familiarity with the underground world that “the smell of mud and human skin became agreeable, part of my life.” But contact from above had done nothing to ease the constant humidity. “Our clothes were wet; we walked around in our underwear,” he said. At night the men slept together, side by side, on the ground.

The men readily admitted that they slept huddled and close on the tunnel floor, which brought up questions of sexual activity. The communal sleeping arrangements proved fertile turf for those who doubted that thirty-three men—regardless of their stress and suffering—could live for weeks without sex. Sepúlveda denied rumors of homosexual activity during the seventeen days of solitude, insisting that their energy level was barely sufficient for walking and talking. Sex, he said, was far from their minds.

As operator of the heavy earthmover known as a “scoop,” Sepúlveda needed to activate foot pedals and consequently wore a different type of boot than the typical miner. His boots were thicker, enveloping his feet in constant humidity; this caused a severe case of fungal infection on his feet. Sepúlveda's chest and back were mottled with tiny red spots. Like a disease, the fungus spread across his body; sometimes the bumps filled with liquid and ruptured, leaving small scars. The 95 percent humidity was perfect for this itchy fungus, which drove him half mad. Dirty water and the constant humidity caused infections inside his mouth as well. Like most of the miners, his breath was rancid. He missed hundreds of little comforts from above, but now his first request was simple: a toothbrush.

DAY 18: ABOVE GROUND

Pedro Gallo prayed his invention would work. After two weeks of tinkering, Gallo, who owned Bellcom, a one-man telecommunications company, had built a tiny telephone that would fit inside the 3.5-inch limitations of
la paloma
tube. Golborne and other rescue officials had initially ignored the insistent entrepreneur and his “Gallo-phone,” but as one high-tech plan after another failed, Gallo had his opportunity. Minister Golborne was scheduled to speak with the miners, and aides were beginning to imagine the scandal that would erupt if there was not a functioning phone line in place.

After being ignored and having his contraption ridiculed, Gallo was summoned and told to have the phone up and running immediately. He raced to his pickup and pulled out the rustic invention. “They gave me about two hours,” said Gallo. The phone was gently packed inside a
paloma
and, along with a half mile of fiber-optic cable donated by a Japanese firm, lowered to the anxious men. Gallo hovered over a cheap yellow plastic telephone set on a flimsy table on the mountainside, with presidential aides and engineers clustered close, waiting as, down below, Ariel Ticona and Carlos Bugueño wired the phone to the Japanese cable. Suddenly, Gallo heard voices from deep inside the mine, echoed and transmitted to the surface above. His invention, which had cost less than $10, was now the key element in the ongoing communications with the miners. Gallo was overjoyed.

Less than an hour later, Minister Golborne arrived and picked up the receiver.

“Hello,” said Golborne. “Yes, I hear you!” A rousing cheer and applause erupted from the rescue workers, who quickly quieted to listen in on speakerphone.

A clear and calm voice was heard: “This is shift foreman Luis Urzúa. . . . We are waiting for the rescue.”

“We are starting to drill tunnels and—” Golborne's words were instantly drowned out by a new round of celebration, this time from the trapped miners. The conversation continued with the miners desperately asking about the fate of Raúl “Guatón” (“Fat Man”) Villegas, who had been driving up the ramp when the collapse hit. “They are all alive, they made it out,” said Golborne, and a chorus of crying and frenetic screams filled the cavern and echoed up to the rescue parties. For weeks, while the world cried for the miners, the miners had suffered for the Fat Man.

The lead psychologist on the rescue mission, Alberto Iturra, listened intently as he stood just behind Golborne throughout the phone call. Dressed in a green reflective vest and safety helmet, his stoic face framed by a trim gray mustache, Iturra neither smiled nor cheered. The medical literature was filled with treatments for claustrophobia and panic attacks and even examples of humans trapped for days in confined spaces. But trapped for months? Iturra knew exactly where to turn. For years he had maintained a network of professional contacts that included a group of esteemed psychologists. Now he would tap that circle. Iturra sent out his own private SOS.

Nursing the miners back from the brink was a delicate task. Starvation had altered the miners' chemical makeup. In addition to burning fat and consuming muscle for energy, the human body, when deprived of food, develops a chemical hierarchy that prioritizes the lungs, heart and brain above now-secondary functions.

Dr. Mañalich, the double-chinned, effusive minister of health, sent a one-page questionnaire to the buried men. Were the miners dying? No. Were they suffering from starvation and loss of body mass? Clearly. How much weight each man had lost was a mystery. Amid the frenzy to deliver a baseline level of comfort, it would be days before a weighing scale could be lowered down to the men, who would then be hung like fish at market, their feet off the ground as they swung from the scale. As the completed questionnaires were returned, the answers revealed fragments of the lost men's experience. Mario Sepúlveda's lost tooth from his climb up the chimney. Victor Segovia's earaches from the blasting piston effect. Mario “Mocho” Gómez revealing he was having trouble breathing, the dust clogging his already sabotaged lungs.

Preexisting conditions, including José Ojeda's diabetes, were now a growing concern. In the absence of ultraviolet light, infections and bacteria could spread through the group in days—if not hours. An emergency vaccination plan was developed to protect the men against diphtheria and pneumonia. An infected tooth could kill. Dr. Mañalich began to research medical history. “We began to look at the old medical textbooks,” said Mañalich. “How did doctors treat internal infections like appendicitis before the age of modern surgery?”

Dr. Jorge Díaz, medical director for the Asociación Chilena de Seguridad (ACHS), the insurance company that covered worker accidents at the San José mine, said, “We had hoped they would be alive, but we thought there could be serious injuries and some dead. . . . I knew the miners were tough. So it seemed certain that some had survived.” As a specialist in high-altitude injuries and workplace accidents, Díaz was accustomed to logistical challenges. Now Díaz faced the challenge of his career: instead of high altitude, he had to implement a medical protocol for the deeply entombed. Fortunately, Díaz had spent thirty-two years serving miners. He knew the slang, the traditions and the rough world Los 33 inhabited.

The miners were in delicate health. They had lost an average of twenty pounds each, surviving off contaminated water and almost no food. The medical team refused to send the men a solid meal, since a full serving could actually kill them. Known as “re-feeding syndrome,” the introduction of a large meal, rich in carbohydrates, to a starved person can induce a chemical chain reaction that drains essential mineral supplies from the heart, leading to cardiac arrest and instant death.

Instead the men were hydrated. Fortt's
paloma
was packed with bottled water and lowered by cable. The first delivery took over an hour. But when the orange PVC tube was hauled up, it was empty—the system worked.
La paloma
was now the life support system for thirty-three men. Anything that was to be delivered had to fit the minuscule dimension of 3.5 inches. Mañalich formed a circle with his hands the size of a lemon and said, “A whole world reduced to this size.”

As media reports flooded the airwaves and the Internet with details of the shockingly good news, the world discovered both Chile and the Chilean miners. A new vocabulary was introduced, including the word
paloma
and the phrase “Los
33.”

The impression most people had of Chile was either 1970s Pinochet-era human rights abuses or a more modern yet equally superficial association as a producer of tasty—and inexpensive—wine.

Now, the eyes of the world shifted to this previously obscure corner of northern Chile. Plane flights and hotel rooms sold out. The rental price for a motor home—a favorite on-site sleeping quarters for foreign TV crews—soared 300 percent. English translators throughout the region were booked solid. Hundreds of reporters rushed to the scene for a rare moment when the lens of the world focused on a story with neither blood nor violence.

The Chileans had first found the men at a depth twice the height of the Eiffel Tower. Now they had a second Mission Impossible: to keep the men alive for another four months, until Christmas, the time it was expected to take to dig the men out.

At his office in Berlin, Pennsylvania, Brandon Fisher watched the TV screen in amazement. The bearded thirty-eight-year-old couldn't believe what he was hearing: three to four months? As president of Center Rock Inc., Fisher oversees the design, manufacture and delivery of drill systems that cost up to $1 million. Fisher didn't think it was necessary to drill through the rock. His company specialized in manufacturing pneumatic hammers that smash rock twenty times a second, effectively pounding the rock to pieces.

In 2002, Fisher participated in a rescue at the Quecreek mine, a Pennsylvania coal mine where nine miners were trapped for seventy-eight hours when 50 million gallons of water flooded in. The rising water threatened to drown the trapped men. Fisher participated in the drilling operation that saved the miners as water lapped ever higher in the flooded tunnels. Now he flashed back to the Quecreek operation. Mine collapse. Trapped men. Emergency drill operation. Fisher instantly saw a role for Center Rock. Fisher wanted to volunteer. He began looking for flights to
Chile.

Late that same afternoon, a millionaire drove into Camp Hope at the wheel of his gleaming yellow Hummer. With his tailored Ermenegildo Zegna suit, cuff links and rolls of bleached-blond curls bouncing to his shoulders, Leonardo Farkas was unmistakable. To Chileans, the forty-three-year-old mine owner was an exemplary businessman; he'd never have let such an accident occur in one of his mines. Farkas's mining companies Santa Fe and Santa Barbara are open-pit iron mines widely recognized as operations that prioritize worker safety, fair wages and profit-sharing plans. A job with Farkas was a guarantee of top living and retirement benefits. “You have to wait for someone to die to work there,” joked Mauricio, a taxi driver in Copiapó who applied in vain for one of the two thousand employment slots with Farkas's mining operation. “It is like a big family; everyone wants to work there.”

Farkas is a legend in Chile for his spontaneous charity, ranging from million-dollar donations to the Teletón, a Chilean fundraiser for disabled people, to the afternoon he walked by a swimming pool filled with university students and offered a reward to the fastest swimmer in the pool. The first one across the pool would receive a check for one million Chilean pesos—the equivalent of $2,000. Sports are an important part of education, said Farkas, who minutes later wrote a check payable to Eduardo Hales, the astonished winner. Restaurant waiters who served Farkas were often rewarded with tips in the thousands of dollars.

Stepping from his Hummer, flashing his curls and gleaming white teeth, Farkas looked like a lounge singer from Las Vegas teleported to the wrong desert. Farkas began to hand out plain white envelopes, one to each family. Inside was a check for 5 million Chilean pesos—roughly $10,000.

“From the first day, my company has cooperated here,” said Farkas in a brief statement in which he hinted at but did not explicitly mention the boxes of sandwiches his company had regularly delivered to the rescue team. “We bought parkas and hats for this cold weather. Not all our contributions are public or told to the press.” Farkas then announced a campaign to raise $1 million for each miner—a call for businessmen and citizens alike to “reach into their pocket” to assure that the men would never again need to work. “I don't want that when these guys get out . . . they have economic worries,” said Farkas. “I am not here to offer them work; I am here to offer them something better than work—that every family has a million dollars.” Grateful family members promised to deposit the checks and noted that Farkas had wisely made the checks payable directly to the individual miners, avoiding ugly disputes.

While Fisher and Farkas organized their separate plans to help the trapped miners, Alejandro Bohn, co-owner of the San José mine, incited a new storm of criticism when he gave an interview on August 23 to the Chilean radio station Cooperativa and announced that the company “is tranquil” about the possible legal fallout from the mining accident.