33 Men

by Jonathan Franklin

  By the time Sougarret arrived, six different drills had been tried in haste—and chaos. “They were making various holes but there was no strategy,” said Sougarret of the drilling scenario he inherited. “We decided that there would be three drilling techniques . . . three parallel plans with different concepts: some would be fast and others precise. We were fighting time. If we wanted to be precise, we would be much slower. If we wanted to advance quickly, things could deviate.” Sougarret calculated that the boreholes could advance 325 feet per day; to achieve the precision necessary for the drills to be even close to the trapped men would take—at a minimum—a full week.

  With sketchy maps of the mine, the drillers were forced to estimate the exact location of the underground safety shelter—the presumed spot where any surviving miners might be holed up. Could the men have made it to the shelter? The vehicle workshop? Or were they buried in the rubble? Like the rescuers who searched the shafts manually, the amount of guesswork was a frightening variable for engineers accustomed to precise instructions.

  Typically a drilling operation is aimed at a massive pool of oil or an underground aquifer. Here the target was minuscule: the safety shelter was the size of a backyard swimming pool. If engineers misdirected the borehole heading by just two inches, by the time it had tunneled the 2,300 feet down to the level of the safety shelter, it would miss by hundreds of feet. “When we arrived at the mine, we were told to place our drill right above the refuge,” said Eduardo Hurtado, a drilling supervisor with Terraservice, a Chilean company that specializes in perforations. “The bulldozer began to flatten the area to make the platform for the drilling rig and the topographer was making measurements. Then José Toro, a geologist from the El Salvador mine, came. He knew the area well and told us to move the machine; they were worried that the entire mountain might still come down.”

  DAY 5: TUESDAY, AUGUST 10

  Despite the huge challenge of finding the men, the sound of drilling was taken by everyone at Camp Hope as a positive sign. If any of the men were alive, the distant rumbling would alert them that rescue efforts had commenced. “I know that they feel every thud from the drills that are perforating the rock, bringing to them that which is most fundamental—oxygen, food and water,” said President Piñera. “I hope that the six drilling machines that are working tirelessly will permit a happy ending. But I also want to acknowledge that this is not easy; the situation is very complex, and the mine keeps collapsing, as it has a geological fault. As the miners say, the mine is alive and that makes the rescue tremendously difficult.” As the president and his team calculated the intricacies of the rescue plan, hundreds of local residents flooded into the mine site.

  August 10 is Dia del Minero—Day of the Miner—in Chile, and family members, friends and colleagues of the trapped men gathered at the San José mine to prepare a grim ceremony. Under normal circumstances, the Day of the Miner is a festive tradition that includes communal asados (a picnic with slabs of grilled meat), dances, religious blessings and recognition of the profession that catapulted Chile into the world economy and has helped maintain the nation’s relative wealth.

  In 2010, all the parties were canceled. At the San José mine, a somber procession was organized. An estimated two thousand people formed a brief and painful pilgrimage. Chilean National Television (TVN) broadcast a live feed from the remote region. The nation watched as the family members slowly marched by, tears streaming down their faces. A crew of men struggled as they carried a statue of San Lorenzo, the patron saint of miners, for whom the rescue operation was named. Other men lofted on their shoulders the Virgin of Candelaria, a symbol of protection who was kept in a shrine at the nearby La Candelaria mine. After direct petition from the families at San José, the Virgin’s return trip to La Candelaria was canceled; her powers were needed here. From an improvised altar on the back of a flatbed truck, Bishop Gaspar Quintana urged families to remain strong, chastised government officials for substandard workplace safety, and issued a direct petition for Dios to send good news about the trapped men. “Send us a signal,” he pleaded. “Soon.”

  Local governor Ximena Matas sought to first acknowledge the collective grief, then channel it toward a team of psychologists that local government officials had cobbled together. Her team had raided the psychology department of the local anti-drug offices and imported other psychologists from Santiago to counsel the families. “We understand without a doubt that these have been very brutal days and nights for you. We have all seen how difficult it is to live this, but we have also seen the support amongst you and the strength you have shown in this wait for your loved ones,” said Matas, who then outlined the importance of sharing those feelings with the mental health professionals brought in by the government.

  DAY 6: WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11

  The two hundred family members awoke to yet another surprise in the desert: heavy rain. An unusual storm hit the Atacama, turning the dust-clogged tent city into a bitterly cold and slippery mud patch. Some families spent the day inside cars, the heat on, windows rolled up. “We are not going to abandon my brother,” said Jeanette Vega, whose brother Alex was trapped. “As long as he is not out, no one moves from here despite the rain, the cold or the sun.” Throughout the day, family members huddled in sleeping bags, drank tea and coffee from Thermoses, and used clear plastic tarps to shield the tents from the rain. Army troops came in and began erecting a flat, more sheltered area for a series of tents—an area where family members would be more isolated from the constant stream of trucks and vehicles. By evening, the temperature had dropped to 28 degrees Fahrenheit and the families clustered around bonfires. Local vineyards had donated stalks pruned from aged grapevines; the hard, twisted wood burned slowly and hot—and the blazes continued until daybreak. Sleep was no longer part of daily life.

  DAY 7: THURSDAY, AUGUST 12

  A week had gone by with no signs of life from the miners. Rescue workers had seen their options narrow as the mine continually shifted, crushing ventilation shafts and burying hopes of an imminent rescue. The Chilean mining community rushed to send rescue teams, high-tech search tools, and as many drills as necessary, but from the missing men there was not a word.

  “This is not the moment to be demoralized. My colleagues can probably hear the sound of the drilling, and that will give them more strength,” said Gino Cortés, the worker at the San José mine who, five weeks earlier, lost his leg when it was sliced off by falling rock inside the same mine. “These are tough miners,” Cortés said. “We know the dangers we are exposed to so there is a certain level of acceptance.”

  At 2 pm (the estimated time of the collapse a week prior) sirens and horns were blasted and church bells rang but the immediate silence afterward was more telling. A week and still no news. Family members continued to migrate up the mountainside, decorating the hillside with photographs and painting rocks with the names of the loved and lost. They settled in, pitching tents and beseeching rescue workers to never give up on the buried men. Camp Hope became a teeming, living shrine.

  The camp evoked a sense of instant community—which was hardly surprising, as the majority of the miners were local residents, neighbors, cousins and, in the case of Renán and Florencio Ávalos, brothers. These miners were the sons of frontier-style families with six, eight, ten children, often with multiple fathers. Trapped miners Jorge Galleguillos and Darío Segovia each came from a family with thirteen siblings. With an average of eight siblings apiece, these miners came from families twice or even three times the size of the average Chilean family, a reality now reflected in the burgeoning numbers at the camp.

  In response to the mushrooming population of Camp Hope, the Chilean Army mobilized to deliver portable toilets and food. A field kitchen was established, with meals scheduled four times a day—the fourth being once, Chile’s 6 pm version of British teatime. Ivan Viveros Aranas, a Chilean policeman working at Camp Hope, was heartened by the outpouring of help. “The country has shown a unity independent of
religion or social class,” said Aranas, who no longer patrolled the camp but spent most of the time in conversation with the family members or playing football with the growing horde of young children at the mine site. “You see people arriving here just to volunteer; they have no relation to the trapped miners.”

  As Sougarret’s operation expanded, the hillside around the mouth of the San José mine filled with makeshift structures: shipping containers were converted into offices, crude awnings were thrown up to shade engineers from the blistering desert sun, a pair of motor homes now housed the tiny but expanding crew of on-site journalists. Dozens of helmeted men in reflective jumpsuits awaited instructions. A caravan of fire trucks, bulldozers and ambulances arrived on site. Tractor-trailer trucks slogged up the final curves, an always-heralded parade of high-tech equipment responding to disparate teams of engineers scurrying to design a solution. Despite the grim prognosis, the camp was alive with the spirit of survival, and every few hours a distant honking announced the arrival of another load of free supplies or rescue equipment.

  A dull rumble became the backbeat at Campamento Esperanza. Like traffic in a metropolis, the mechanical groan of diesel engines eventually begins to sound natural, akin to wind or the tides. Above the camp, a brilliant sky offered thousands of sparks and stars, irrefutable evidence that the world’s top astronomers chose well when they invested billions in observatories in this corner of South America. Students of the stars consider the Atacama region the planet’s best lens for exploring other worlds. For the residents of Camp Hope, their prayers went skyward but their every worry was directed deep down, into the earth.

  Minister Laurence Golborne was finding sleep an elusive companion. The rookie politician responded to a flurry of orders from President Piñera, abandoning his wife and six children for a single obsession: the fate of the thirty-three. But a week into the rescue efforts, Golborne was distraught. Internal studies commissioned by the government were pessimistic; one study summed up the probability of the men being alive at 2 percent. Desperate, Golborne secretly went to hear a psychic. She told the minister that she had a vision of the men: sixteen were alive and one had a badly injured leg. Afterward Golborne was unsure what was more incredible, the possibility that the men were alive or the fact that a government minister had paid attention to a soothsayer.

  Proposals flooded into Golborne’s office—along with ideas, donations and theories. One company proposed using the borehole to deliver one thousand rats into the caverns. Each rat would have a panic button strapped to its back. Once released, the rats would scatter and scamper through the innards of the mountain, allowing a trapped miner to first catch a rodent and then press the button. Hearing the rat alarm, rescuers would then be assured that survivors existed.

  On August 12, Golborne went public with his doubts. “The chances of finding them alive are low.” Following his comments, Golborne was inundated by a tidal wave of criticism. Family members were devastated; keeping the faith was a tenet of their emotional stability. Doubts were akin to treason. A day later President Piñera was forced to step into the fray. He announced, “The hopes of the government are more alive than ever.” Piñera’s optimism stemmed from insider knowledge: the drilling was advancing twice as fast as expected. In less than two days, one of the drills had reached nearly 1,000 feet. At that rate, contact could be made forty-eight hours later, by August 14. Yet even if the borehole arrived at the workshop or tunnel or refuge, the hole would be no bigger than an apple, and then what?

  DAY 8: FRIDAY, AUGUST 13

  Engineers at Codelco scoured the world for technologies to improve the drilling and, if the miners were found alive, provide food and medicine to the distant men. The solution came from a local physics professor, Miguel Fortt, from the Universidad del Mar, in Copiapó. On twelve previous rescue efforts in Chile and abroad, Fortt had been on the front line of life-and-death mining disasters. As a former miner, Fortt combined the practical knowledge of life inside a mine with the technical experience gained from varied rescue operations. Using 10-foot tubes of PVC piping, Fortt envisioned a system by which these tubes could be stuffed with bottled water and food and then lowered by rope to the depths of the mine. It was an audacious and optimistic plan. Testing began immediately. The Chilean invention was named “paloma mensajero”—the messenger pigeon—later shortened simply to “la paloma.” Fortt’s ingenuity would soon be displayed to a worldwide audience.

  As the government scurried to round up the tools and professionals needed for the complex rescue, two voices were notably absent: the mine owners. From the day of the collapse, when they failed to alert the families promptly, to their inability to provide accurate maps, the attitude of Marcelo Kemeny and Alejandro Bohn was widely criticized.

  To family members the refusal by Kemeny and Bohn to take responsibility for relaying news of the accident was criminal. Jail time was considered too lenient. According to relatives at Camp Hope, the real way to punish the owner of a dangerous mine was to sentence him to “mine jail.” It was rumored that in China, a mine operator found guilty of negligence was sentenced to serve time underground, inside a mine, fixing the very safety problems that had led workers to their deaths.

  Even before the accident, the owners of San José mine owed the Chilean government more than $2 million. The entire company was financially unstable, tottering under piles of debt and a safety record that was equally precarious. Despite producing an estimated 6,000 pounds of copper a day (worth an estimated $22,000) and with gold reserves estimated at some 600,000 ounces (at 2010 prices worth nearly a billion dollars), the owners were clearly desperate. The 2009 annual report’s concluding page read, in bold letters:

  SITUATION

  PROBLEMS TO GO ON WITH THE MINE.

  CLOSE THE MINE.

  SELL.

  Chilean justice is usually slow and sabotaged by procedural motions filed by defense attorneys. However, the huge media attention on the San José collapse launched at least three separate investigations—the Chilean Congress, government prosecutors and a team of private lawyers working on behalf of the families. President Piñera warned: “There will be no immunity” for those responsible. He then decapitated the leadership of Sernageomin, the government’s mine safety agency, firing three top officials. Documents confiscated from the offices of San Esteban Primera, the mine company that owned San José mine, as well as government inquiries immediately led to questions about how the accident-plagued mine had managed to reopen after numerous fatal accidents. Suspecting that at least some of the miners were dead, government prosecutors mapped out a trial strategy that included charges of homicide.

  DAY 9: SATURDAY, AUGUST 14

  Sougarret, who feared being held responsible for a “rescue” that ended with a body count, ordered a change in technology. The two most advanced drills were stopped and the entire shaft hauled out of the ground. As he had feared, the enemy of speed was precision and the speedy holes had veered off course. With new drill parts flown in from the United States and Australia, Sougarret was confident the drills would stay on course—though at a far slower pace. Recalibrated and reconfigured with the new technologies, the drills began operating once again.

  On the hill a good-natured rivalry erupted between the nine different drilling crews. The men were veterans of the same army, a band of itinerant drillers who roamed northern Chile providing service to Anglo American, Codelco and other billion-dollar ventures. The conditions at the San José mine were, given the standards of modern mining, practically pre-industrial age. As they ate together the mess tent became a kind of entrepreneurial information exchange; the drillers were aware of the historic and unique nature of their mission. What worked to find oil, gas and water was only partially useful in the search for trapped men. “When we are drilling for minerals, it is expected that the drill will go off course by up to seven percent; that is normal and almost expected,” said Eduardo Hurtado, from Terraservice, the drilling company donating equipment and personne
l to the search for the miners.

  DAY 12: TUESDAY, AUGUST 17

  For the first time, a probe passed the 2,000-foot mark, though it was losing power due to a major oil leak. “This drill can’t be corrected; it is aimed at three tunnels,” Minister Golborne told the media. “It could hit a tunnel or could pass between them. It has three chances to hit tunnels; it could hit or it could miss.” Like a long-distance golf shot, the drills were launched in a smooth parabola. The goal was to pierce one of the tunnels en route. Asked about the responsibility of the mine owners, Golborne said those questions could wait. “Here, we are focused on the most important goal—making contact with the men. Our priority is to find them. We have many people volunteering, working intensely. Let’s concentrate on the positive,” said Golborne. “The costs and responsibilities have time. Our compañeros underground don’t.”

  DAY 13: WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18

  Golborne’s warnings were prescient. The drill shaft closest to the suspected location of the men passed by all three tunnels—missing each one. As distraught engineers watched, the drill kept up a smooth pace. Hitting an open cavern would have been evident—yet the bits chewed straight through rock without pause. At 2,400 feet the operation was halted. Plans for the wildly anticipated contact were canceled. Instead, despair filled the air when Sougarret informed the families. “This mine did not have the standards from which we could base engineering work,” he said. “A mine has to file the monthly updates, to have blueprints of all the working areas; those were not there. That’s why the blueprints did not coincide with reality; the topographic information was not precise.”