33 Men (12 page)

“We never had any forewarning of this kind of catastrophe. The workers were trained and had the security equipment so that they could deal with this kind of event and they would have the necessary protection,” said Bohn, who hinted that the company might stop paying salaries for the thirty-three trapped workers and another three hundred company employees. “We have spoken to the authorities with respect to searching for solutions to continue operating. Unfortunately, for the moment, they—like us—are focused on the rescue of our workers.”

Asked if he planned to apologize in any way to the miners and their families, Bohn hesitated. “It is necessary to be cautious. The investigation must be advanced to see if anything could have been done beforehand.” The mine owner also refused to testify at an upcoming hearing before an investigative committee of the Chilean congress.

Minutes later Minister Golborne led a cavalry-sized attack against Bohn. “I find these statements incredible. I heard them and was really surprised.” Golborne then blamed the owners of the San José mine for failing to install a safety ladder in the ventilation shaft. “We could have avoided this whole drama,” said Golborne, adding that the accident highlighted “a very important lack of attention to security” inside the mine.

Senator Alberto Espina also lashed out at Bohn and accused San Esteban Primera S.A. of “bad management, not fulfilling labor laws, provoking a dramatic situation and, finally, distancing itself and saying we don't have money to pay the salaries. It is quite incredible.”

“In the very least they could come before the investigative committee and explain what happened,” said Frank Sauerbaum, a congressional representative who said the mine owners have “systematically refused to assume their responsibility.” Sauerbaum also noted that the miners were alive “thanks to the professional and steady work of the government. If the company that owns the mine had been in charge of the rescue operation, this story would have been completely different.”

DAY 20: WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 25

Luis Urzúa was now busier than he had been in weeks. The authorities above were directing all their messages to the shift foreman, a clear strategy to reinforce Urzúa's much debilitated power. President Piñera called Urzúa to hear firsthand how the men had survived. “How we tried to escape this hell . . . That was a terrifying day,” said Urzúa as he described to Piñera how the men fought to escape the initial cave-in. “It felt like the whole mountain fell atop us and we did not know what happened.” Urzúa then pleaded with Piñera: “The thirty-three miners who are here inside the mine, under a sea of rocks, are waiting for all of Chile to get us out of this hell.”

Urzúa agreed to make a video for the government. A camera would be sent down and the men were to film their living conditions and conduct a brief tour of their remarkable world. As the conversation continued, the miners relaxed and the dialogue became more informal. They asked the president to send a special treat for the upcoming bicentennial celebration on September 18: “a glass of wine.”

DAY 21: THURSDAY, AUGUST 26

As the miners prepared to sleep, a nine-minute video was released by the Chilean government, broadcast at prime time on a Friday night in Chile. A window was opening into their underground civilization. It was the miners' first TV appearance. As the news video zipped around the world, the response was incredible. The world was stunned.

Florencio Ávalos held the camera while Sepúlveda slowly panned inside the tiny cave that was the safety shelter. The crude, irregular rock walls. The rusted oxygen tank. The cracked tub that served as a holding bin for a jug of water. The tattered medicine chest that was no bigger than a knapsack and the medications that had long since passed their shelf life.

Huddled like frightened animals, few of the men looked at the camera. Sepúlveda tried to cheer them up, to stir their group spirit. Few of the miners responded. Pablo Rojas tried to speak but choked up. Other men lay prone on the floor, avoiding the camera. Exhaustion hung heavy in the crowded shelter; tired eyes stared off into nowhere. They looked like antique black-and-white pictures of traumatized soldiers.

Dirt and overgrown facial hair disguised the men in a cloak of universal suffering. Claudio Yañez looked barely strong enough to stand, his ribs rippling out of his chest. Like a platoon of weary guerrilla fighters, the men exuded an aura of heavy trauma. Death, or the sensation that death was near, gave the video a haunting humanity.

Some men wore orange mining helmets, but few wore shirts. Sweat rolled down their bodies in rivulets. Packed into the 160-square-foot safety shelter, the miners looked distraught. Sepúlveda continued with his cheerleading performance, joking that a miner had found a new box spring and mattress and cajoling the men to share a few words with beloved family members. Zamora rallied his energy to thank the families. “We know how you fought for us.” Zamora paused to dry his tears. “And we all applaud you.” The cheers were brief.

At the end of the video, the miners began to sing the Chilean national anthem, their voices ringing out despite their obvious exhaustion. Whatever else the world would take away from the first sight of the miners, few would doubt that they were united.

The video was a virtual tour of the miners' secret world. While many of the miners were shown lying down and appeared shy in front of the camera, Sepúlveda, with humor and eloquence and brimming with confidence, put on the performance of a lifetime. He prodded the men one by one to address their families, to send a few brief words of hope and greetings. The video was a shockingly positive summation of the miners' fragile existence and a proud declaration of survival.

Sepúlveda's role was not a stroke of luck but a media-savvy strategy: the Piñera government had worked with the miners to appoint Sepúlveda as host. “We had to ask the miners not to put Florencio Ávalos on TV but to use
‘
the artist
'
[Sepúlveda],” explained Dr. Mañalich, the health minister. “It was a very difficult negotiation.” The Piñera government wanted to showcase the miners to the world as heroes, human trophies highlighting the president's inspiring and entrepreneurial spirit. But this media strategy required select and careful editing. The video was carefully censored; images of the men's fungal infections were edited out. Scenes of sobbing miners were never shown.

DAY 22: FRIDAY, AUGUST 27

A flood of letters came up from below, handwritten notes detailing the men's unique world. Psychologists and family members could now begin to piece together routines and rules for this miniature society. The miners detailed the logistics of their three working groups of eleven men, revealing how each group took turns for an eight-hour shift, in an ongoing fight to survive underground. “We have three groups, Refugio
[Refuge], Rampa [the Ramp] and 105 [meters above sea level],” wrote Omar Reygadas in a letter to his family. “I am head of one [Refugio].” Each group had a leader, a “
capataz,
” who reported directly to Urzúa.

As the men began to recover their strength, a daily schedule was organized. Rescue leaders feared that with food and water no longer scarce, without strict schedules imposed from above, the men would relax all day long and social cohesion would disintegrate in a textbook example of “idle hands are the devil's workshop.” Led by the
capataz
, each group was given daily tasks. For the morning shift, the day began with a 7:30
am
wake-up, breakfast at 8:30 and a morning of chores, some sent from mining engineers above, others simple obedience to common sense.

To the surprise of professionals both in Chile and at NASA, the miners had developed a protocol of routines and tasks that turned the seventeen-day experience into an extension of their everyday routines. Instead of abandoning their individual roles, many of the men adapted and employed their mechanical and electrical skills to construct new inventions that were key to their survival. The continuation of routines had allowed the men to avoid a sensation of helplessness. “Our goal is to help them help themselves, not to treat them as sick,” said Dr. Llarena.

With their energy rebounding, the miners began to reinforce weak walls, clear debris and divert the streams of water seeping into their sleeping areas. The
paloma
tubes connecting the men to the surface were lubricated with water, creating a stream of muddy gunk that constantly dripped into their world. Letters from the men were stained with drops of sweat and blotches of brown mud—permanent reminders of the 90 percent humidity and 92-degree air temperature inside the mine. But now they were receiving shampoo, soap, toothpaste and towels—a five-star upgrade in comparison to just days earlier.

The men organized security patrols along the perimeter of their sleeping and living quarters, a constant vigil for signs that the notoriously unstable San José mine might again be giving way and trapping them in an even more confined space. The miners feared a small stream of rocks could give way, then expand avalanche-like into a full-scale collapse. The men spent hours every day “
acunando
”—using long-handled picks to clear large rocks from the roof of the mine.

“They will hide like rats and seek shelter at the first major movement of rocks,” said Alejandro Pino, a lead organizer of the rescue operation with the Asociación Chilena de Seguridad (ACHS)
.
“These are experienced miners. At the first sign of major movement, they know where to hide.”

With
paloma
deliveries arriving every forty minutes, the
palomas
created a constant chore for the trapped men. Six miners were assigned as
palomeros
, a new Chilean word meaning “pigeon catchers.” The
palomeros
were tasked with receiving the 10-foot metal tube, unscrewing the cap, pouring or shaking out the contents, and stuffing in the latest letters and messages, then waiting for the torpedo-like tube to rise out of sight.

“We only give them a short time; they have to complete the
paloma
operation in ninety seconds,” said Dr. Mañalich, the minister of health. “It could be there for ten minutes, but we give them less than two minutes so they have to complete routines. . . . Yesterday they told us, ‘We have never worked this hard in our life.' That is a very good sign. They should not stop at any moment. They have to be working for at least eight hours during the day.”

Even when it was not their turn, the miners began to wait at the
paloma
station, either to receive a cherished letter or out of sheer curiosity about the gadgets, goods and never-ending barrage of incoming packages. Thanks to the increasingly efficient delivery system, four days after contact had been made, the miners had a projector, new head lamps and a stash of fresh water in their refuge. Rescue workers urged the men to stockpile fourteen days' worth of food. “They are starting to have a strategic reserve,” said Pino of the ACHS.

Food deliveries and meals took up a chunk of the day. Lunch delivery started at noon, and it took a full hour and a half for all the meals to arrive. “When they finish lunch, they have a general meeting, and in this meeting they start their prayers,” said Dr. Díaz.

José Henríquez, as usual, led the daily prayer. “Don José” lived for Jesus and his daily sermons. What began as a small prayer group had by now turned into a full-fledged evangelical conversion. Twenty men regularly went to his mass, sometimes more. Henríquez could now count on Florencio Ávalos, the group's official cameraman, to record his sermons.

Pedro Cortés and Carlos Bugueño were appointed as sound technicians and put in charge of maintaining the phone lines for conference calls scheduled for the early afternoon.

Nineteen-year-old Jimmy Sánchez, the youngest of the group, became the “environmental assistant” and, together with Samuel Ávalos, roamed the caverns with a handheld computerized device to measure oxygen, carbon dioxide levels and the air temperature. Every day Sánchez and Ávalos took the readings off the Dräger X-am 5000 and sent reports to the medical team above ground.

With basic needs including food and sleeping quarters now organized, the men began to fill bureaucratic and cultural positions. José Ojeda, now known worldwide as the author of the famous first note, was named the official secretary. Victor Segovia continued as the group's official chronicler, penning daily accounts in an ongoing log of the men's predicament.

Within days of the initial contact, rescue officials appointed Yonni Barrios as the group's doctor, recognizing a position Barrios had already assumed for himself during the first seventeen days. He quickly recruited Daniel Herrera, who was given the title “assistant paramedic.”

Of all the men tasked with keeping the group functioning, Barrios was perhaps the most crucial. He vaccinated the entire group against diphtheria, tetanus and pneumonia, and with fungal infections and bad teeth at the forefront of medical problems facing the miners, Barrios found himself at the center of an unprecedented experiment in telemedicine.

Apart from daily medical rounds, Barrios had an hour-long conference call every afternoon in which he received messages from the medical team.

“Yonni, can you hear me?” yelled Dr. Mañalich during a medical conference call conducted by a telephone hooked up to a 2,300-foot cable. “Yonni, have you ever pulled out a tooth?”

From far below, the crackle of Barrios's voice arrived topside. “Yeah . . . one of my own.”

The doctors looked at each other in surprise, shocked by the miner's humble reality. “If we have to ask you to pull a tooth and send you sterilized equipment, could you?” asked Mañalich, who promised to send video instructions on how best to extract an infected molar. Mañalich sent a friendly warning to Barrios: “Remember, Yonni: tell the men if they don't keep brushing their teeth that you will soon be ripping their teeth out.”