Great escape: Chilean miners rise to freedom
SAN JOSE MINE, Chile, Oct. 13: One by one, the miners trapped for 69 days in a dungeon that could have been their tomb climbed into a rescue capsule and made a smooth ascent to the surface on Wednesday, greeted by the embraces of loved ones, cheered by joyous Chileans and watched by a captivated world.
The anxiety that had accompanied the careful final days of preparation broke at 12:11 am, when the stoutest of the men, Florencio Avalos, emerged from the missile-like chamber and smiled broadly after his half-mile journey to fresh air. By 11 pm IST, 19 men had been pulled from the mine in 16 hours, including the oldest and youngest among the trapped.
The effort was methodical and free of any problems, and on track to finish before sunrise on Thursday.
Amid an explosion of cheers, Mr Avalos hugged his sobbing 7-year-old son and wife and then the Chilean President, Mr Sebastian Pinera, who has been deeply involved in an effort that had become a matter of national pride.
Mr Avalos was followed an hour later by the most ebullient of the group, Mr Mario Sepulveda, whose shouts were heard even before the capsule peeked above the surface. He hugged his wife, handed out souvenir rocks from the mine to rescuers, bounded out and thrust a fist upward like a prizefighter.
“I think I had extraordinary luck. I was with God and with the devil. And I reached out for God,” Mr Sepulveda said as he awaited the air force helicopter ride to a nearby hospital where all the miners were to spend 48 hours under medical observation.
No one in recorded history has survived as long trapped underground as the 33 men.
For the first 17 days after 700,000 tons of rock collapsed around them August 5, no one even knew whether they were alive.
In the weeks that followed, the world was transfixed by their endurance and unity.
The health minister, Mr Jaime Manalich, said the rescues came as quickly as 36 minutes apart.
Communications technology — including live video from within the mine — turned the entire world into a global village hoping for the safe release of men they did not know and would probably never meet.
It was as if each of us could see ourselves in their place, wondering how we would cope with the sustained terror and then the sudden emergence into the light.
“It feels like we’re all there with them even though we’re so far away in London,” said Jose Torra, 34, early on Wednesday morning as the rescue unfolded. “For once it is a story with a good ending.”
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