33 Men

by Jonathan Franklin

  For Sougarret, facing the distraught wives was wrenching. He knew the women who begged him for solutions were on the verge of becoming widows. Saving thirty-three men at 2,300 feet was unprecedented. No such rescue had ever been mounted. The daily challenges included invention, execution and improvisation. Many miners thought the drilling was unnecessary; they proposed rescuing the miners using the time-honored technique of hacking, dynamiting and forcing their way through the blocked tunnel. Government PowerPoint explanations about the size and thickness of the rock blocking the mine’s mouth did little to dissuade them.

  Encouraged by the impatient family members, a group of local miners—hardy men willing to swing a pickax all day—protested. “Let us try,” they insisted. The families rallied behind the new plan. Frustrated by delays, near misses and growing desperation, even a half-cocked idea was worth exploring. But Golborne disagreed. The rebel miners began to join up and head toward the mouth of the mine, but a contingent of policemen blocked their path. Fearing trouble, thirty more policemen were rushed in. They brought reinforcements, including an armored truck used to launch tear gas canisters and blast high-powered jets of water from an adjustable nozzle fitted to the roof. Nicknamed “El Guanaco” after the llama-like animal that inhabits this desert and is known to spit, the vehicle was well known to all Chileans. The force of the water could fling an adult to the ground; the tear gas was capable of suffocating infants. The sides of the truck were rippled with dents and scars from previous battles.

  Government officials pressured Sougarret to let the rogue group in, either openly or by turning a blind eye to a clandestine attempt. Sougarret held firm; any option that included the likelihood of a rescuer being trapped or killed was enough to make him walk off the job. One older miner approached Sougarret. He explained that his son was trapped in the mine. If he wanted to risk his life to save his son, he didn’t see what was the problem.

  “He came to me and asked me what I would have done, if it had been my son,” said Sougarret. “That struck me. I couldn’t get that out of my head.”

  FIVE

  17 DAYS OF SILENCE

  DAY 4: MONDAY, AUGUST 9

  Like any platoon commander, Mario Sepúlveda knew that troop loyalty starts in the stomach, then migrates to the more conscious corners of the brain. With his compañeros starving, stressed and divided, Sepúlveda went scavenging. Using tuna from a can, Sepúlveda took the lid of an oil filter, flipped it over and voila! A cooking pot. With tuna and water he concocted a watery broth. It was hardly a meal, yet it gave the miners a taste of fish and the reminder of food. The men ate together, prayed, took pictures with José Henríquez’s cell phone (the last one still functioning), and rested. It was a brief respite from the madness. Several of the miners would later note it as a key moment in Sepúlveda’s ascent as alpha male.

  After four days, the dust settled and, with their minds still spinning, the miners began to explore every nook and crag of the mine. They searched for escape shafts and examined the water stored throughout the mine. Months had passed since the tanks had been filled, and José Ojeda, a rotund, balding man with a complicated case of diabetes, described the polluted liquid as so revolting that he began to prefer another option: drinking his own urine. “I did drink my urine. I told the others and they called me crazy,” he said. “I knew that the Los Uruguayos had done the same.”

  When the miners cited “Los Uruguayos” they were speaking in code to avoid a direct confrontation with their deepest fear: that they would soon be forced to eat one another. In 1972, flying from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Santiago, Chile, for a rugby match, a squad of young Uruguayans miraculously survived when their plane crash-landed in a remote section of the Andes, on the border between Argentina and Chile. After days of starvation, the men began to eat their companions who had perished in the crash and a subsequent avalanche—initially gnawing on hardened chunks of flesh, later defrosting frozen corpses to cook the flesh on heated strips of metal from the fuselage. Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, two of the survivors, hiked for ten days through the mountains until they were found by a Chilean rancher. The story shocked the world. For Chileans, Los Uruguayos was not just a historical anomaly but a gruesome reality that happened on the border of their nation. Inside the mine, the specter of cannibalism accompanied the men from the first days of starvation.

  From the first moments he was trapped in the mine, Victor Zamora, a bushy-haired man with Bob Marley on his brain and a marijuana leaf tattooed to his inner arm, was sure he had landed in hell. Never a religious man, Zamora adapted to his new world by relinquishing his fate to God, constantly cracking jokes and asking only that if this was the end, it be a peaceful finale. “Our only options were wait to be rescued or die,” said Zamora.

  While he worked long hours to organize daily tasks, shift foreman Urzúa was similarly passive in his acceptance of fate, telling the miners, “If they find us, good; if not, that’s it.” Urzúa’s mild manner and soft voice did not reflect his rank, nor were they the typical characteristics of a field commander. Urzúa’s style was a striking contrast to Sepúlveda’s gung ho, hyper-proactive leadership.

  Sepúlveda and Urzúa were soon given the highest authority: control over the rapidly dwindling food supply. Correctly deducing that they were going to be trapped for days, the men initially ate their tiny portion every twelve hours. But before the first week was over, Sepúlveda and Urzúa reduced the meals to once every twenty-four hours. Their stash of emergency food was divided into minimal portions—the spoonful of tuna fish accompanied by half a glass of milk or juice and a cracker. Gathered together, the men would wait until all thirty-three had been served, then in unison they would consume their meager “meal.”

  Decisions were not dictated by Urzúa, Sepúlveda or Mario Gómez—though Gómez commanded vast respect for both his sensible advice and his experience. As the days passed, the miners continued to debate and vote on decisions, arriving at a consensus or agreement after hearing opinions and searching for solutions. Sepúlveda was the unofficial moderator; asserting his voice as a constant interlocutor, he finessed his relationship with individuals and the collective group. “I held myself strong in front of the other men,” said Sepúlveda, “but when they were asleep, I cried. I wished I had a magic wand to make a bed appear, or food.”

  With the advent of a democratic system, the miners established a rudimentary sense of order, organizing daily routines and tasks. Sepúlveda began to assign specific duties to each man. With mechanics, electricians, engineers and heavy machine operators present, Sepúlveda knew just how to exploit this wealth of knowledge. “I just said to Ariel Ticona and Pedro Cortés, ‘You and you are going to be in charge of technology.’ I gave all the people something to do down there. That was my idea.”

  Despite Sepúlveda’s leadership, the miners still accorded Urzúa the respect of a superior and never dethroned the shift foreman—a reflection that order was maintained. “For a miner, their shift leader is sacred and holy. They would never think about replacing him. That is carved in stone; it is one of the commandments in the life of a miner,” said Dr. Andrés Llarena, an official with the Chilean navy. “[Urzúa] is a leader in his field and has been for ages. He is recognized by his peers.”

  The men survived by following a strict regime of daily activities, including prayers and group meetings, and by keeping physical movement to a minimum unless absolutely necessary. One job that was deemed essential was to acunar the ceiling, which involved a group of miners prying loose rocks from the roof and letting them crash to the mine floor, thereby lessening the chances of a colleague being inadvertently “ironed” by falling rock. The more the men worked, the more civility bloomed, as they came together as a team. With basic lighting devised and strung by Edison Peña, and with headlamps charged, the men were able to simulate night and day by turning the lights off every twelve hours. Light made their existence less drastic and provided the smallest semblance of normalcy in the otherworldly e
nvironment. The lights also allowed the men to gather as a group, including at the 1 pm meeting where they made communal decisions.

  Following their “town hall” at one o’clock, the men prayed. Catholics, Evangelicals and atheists united in a single vision of hope, led by José Henríquez, whom the men quickly dubbed “the Pastor.” Henríquez’s evangelical sermons were jotted down by Victor Segovia, the designated “chronicler” of the men’s daily duties and their epic challenges. “I was the operator of a bulldozer, and inside the driver’s compartment I had paper and pen, which stayed dry. That is why I became the writer,” explained Segovia, who years earlier was nearly crushed by a block of rock. That accident left him in a body cast for weeks. Now Segovia’s notebook became a journal of the miners’ daily activities, like a ship’s log.

  “These men were trapped in their ‘office’; they were not tourists who went cave visiting. They know the drill, know how to get around,” said Dr. Llarena. “They regularly spent ten to twelve hours down there in the heat and humidity, and that’s what they’re doing now. It is a long shift, a very long shift, but still a shift.”

  Miguel Fortt, a Chilean with vast experience in mine disaster rescues, emphasized that the miners were organized as a team before the collapse. “It is similar to a shipwreck,” said Fortt. “The miners had to organize in a way that promotes the survival of the maximum number of people; that is something we have in our genetics. The survival instinct is incredibly strong.”

  With a vast supply of water and limited but sufficient air, the miners’ primary concern was food. The minimal daily rations—roughly estimated at 25 calories of tuna and 75 calories of milk—meant the men were on an unsustainable diet. Given the practically unlimited supplies of water, the men had a life expectancy of four to six weeks—possibly less as humans often die first from infections, which tend to take advantage of the body’s weakened state. The nonstop heat forced their bodies to burn calories in an attempt to stay cool, while draining the body of electrolytes via the constant stream of sweat.

  Many of the miners were overweight—an advantage when the body is forced to convert each pound of fat into an estimated 3,600 calories. The chunkier men were like seals in a lean hunting season: their bodies harvested the stored fat. But the initial days were brutally uncomfortable due to hunger pangs that racked their stomachs. For the thinner men, the process of converting fat to calories soon advanced to the next best source of energy: muscle mass.

  As their muscles shriveled, the men noticed unusual growths on their bodies, and stained patches of skin began to form on their chest and feet. The sweltering heat and constant humidity proved an ideal medium for a powerful breed of mold that germinated, then spread, along their bodies. Canker sores and open flesh began to fester inside the men’s mouths, an indication that this environment—so unbearable for humans—was ideal for infections.

  Yonni “Chico Yonni” Barrios became the group’s de facto doctor. A small, frail-looking man who had spent years browsing medical texts and painting with watercolors, Barrios wasn’t supposed to be in the mine on the day of the collapse. He had finished his seven-day shift and was scheduled to have a day off, but he switched when he was offered double his daily wage to continue working. Inside the mine, Barrios had little time to lament his luck; he was constantly being consulted about ailments.

  “He always wanted to be a doctor. He reads so much and he really knows everything about medicine,” said Marta Salinas, his wife. “He would give injections to his mother and was constantly reading.” As he examined the men, made recommendations and tried to keep their spirits up, the miners gave Barrios a new nickname. Inside the mine he was known as “Dr. House.”

  Not all the men were ready for steady tasks. After spending the first day of entrapment recovering from a gruesome hangover, Pablo Rojas was now busy fighting the demons in his head. Rojas, a round-faced man with an easygoing demeanor that emanated tranquillity, had nursed his ailing, alcoholic father for a decade, until a week before the collapse, when his father died. Not only was he still mourning his father—a lifelong miner—but all the postmortem paperwork was still unfinished. Nothing could shake the image of his father from his head. For Rojas, being trapped in the mine was torture.

  Rojas scoured the cave for anything to eat. “There were no bugs or rats in the mine,” he said. “Otherwise we would have eaten them, without a doubt.” Rojas had never felt safe in the mine. He always sensed an imminent tragedy. In 2005 Rojas quit his job at the San José mine when those worries peaked. But he returned in 2010, lured back by the high salary. Now he was indignant—with the owners, with the mine and with himself. How had this happened? When his much-anticipated accident occurred, how had he been dumb enough to be inside the mine?

  DAY 5: TUESDAY, AUGUST 10

  On the fifth day of their entrapment a faint rumble sent vibrations down to the men.

  The distant echo was an unmistakable sound that every miner recognized: a drill was coming toward them. Some men later wrote that it was on August 8, Day 3 of their entrapment, that they heard the sound; others insist it was August 9. With almost all reference points, including the sun and stars, obliterated by nearly half a mile of solid rock, the miners’ recollections of timing are less than exact—and hardly significant compared to the unanimous sensation of hope inspired by the distant drilling.

  Alex Vega held a piece of hollow bamboo to the wall, amplifying the sound and providing clear evidence that a drill was headed straight toward them. Vega’s enthusiasm sagged, however, when he soon discovered that from any portion of the nearly 1.25 miles of tunnels, the bamboo to the wall provided a similar sensation of proximity. Only two of the men had ever worked with borehole drilling machines, and they both knew the process was fraught with failure. “I told them that the first fifty meters [165 feet] would be fast, but after that, the drilling slows down,” said Jorge Galleguillos, who along with José Ojeda knew firsthand the procedures for long-distance drilling.

  With Galleguillos’s words of caution reverberating as loud as the drill itself, the drilling sound became both heartening and frightening. A rescue attempt had begun, yet the sound was so faint and distant, the men realized that at 2,300 feet deep, any tunnel would take weeks to drill and extreme precision to find them. Even in soft rock, the machines rarely advanced more than 250 feet a day, and the miners were all aware that this mountain was packed with some of the hardest rock they had ever encountered—rock twice as hard as granite. The men were briefly enthused, but hunger and fear were not assuaged by a drill that for all practical purposes sounded like it was still on another planet.

  At night, several of the men would jump up from their beds and begin screaming at the drills. “Come on, you fuckers, when are you going to break through? Damn those assholes!” The men would fall back asleep, but wake up two hours later to again hurl curses at the walls.

  On Day 9, food rations were reduced again. From every twenty-four hours, the men decided to eat just once every thirty-six hours—a tiny ingestion of food that did little to trick the body into thinking it was being fed. Starvation and fatigue reduced the miners to minimal movements. They spent the day sleeping on cardboard, conserving what little energy remained. Food was so scarce the men’s small intestines shriveled.

  “God gave me the strength to combat the anxiety and hunger we suffered,” Raúl Bustos later wrote in a letter to his wife, Carolina. “Down here we almost fainted. I prayed and asked for us all, if death happened, that we would take it well.”

  On the eleventh day, Sepúlveda collapsed. The pressures and stress of the extraordinary responsibilities he had hoisted upon himself were too much. He cried. He lay in bed. The captain of the mission was now himself collapsed on his motley bed.

  The other men rushed to help him. Bringing Sepúlveda back was key to the group’s survival.

  “You can’t go, Mario. Without you we aren’t going to make it,” Victor Zamora pleaded.

  “We were like a family,�
� said Samuel Ávalos. “When someone falls, you pick them up. But he was giving up. He simply collapsed, threw in the towel. As a group we understood the pressure he was under, but we also made him understand that he could not abandon the boat. We had given him this leadership.”

  The group resuscitated him. Zamora told him jokes. Ávalos began to take long walks with Sepúlveda. “I told him, ‘Don’t fuck with us, Perry. We have to get out of here.’ ”

  As Sepúlveda came back to life, the group coalesced. More than ever they appreciated their eccentric leader. Alex Vega said, “Mario. Even with his madness, he saved us.”

  The thirty-three miners trapped in a collapsed mine became the unwilling subjects of a cruel test, a unique psychological challenge experienced by few humans. Cut off from the world, they lived in a tunnel with no natural light and—barring the gurgle of water—no natural sounds. Instead they were subjected to an unpredictable but ongoing soundtrack that included the shrieks, groans and fracture of rock. Like the mine itself, the men lived under tremendous stress.

  “What happened down in the mine is a lot of things which, put together, amounted to torture. They were trapped underground—that’s one; in the dark—that’s another; no food—another; bad water. . . . You’re piling on these things which individually are insignificant but put together you have this recipe for potentially a psychological breakdown,” said Dominic Streatfeild, author of Brainwash, an extensive study of mind control experiments and interrogation techniques. “The gold standard for an interrogator is uncertainty, fear of impending death, loss of time, sensory deprivation, no routine. These things unhinge human beings and remove their beliefs, and a lot of them were present in the mine.”