33 Men

by Jonathan Franklin

  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, re
cognizing 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.”

  Barrios had one other important task. “We needed him to measure the men. We needed their circumference in order to find out if they would fit through the small rescue hole now being drilled,” said Dr. Devis Castro, a surgeon with advanced studies in nutrition.

  Above ground Barrios had an even more complicated operation—keeping separation between his lover and his wife, both of whom were battling for him in public attacks that had the media in a frenzy. Below ground, the men never ceased to rib Barrios about the controversy. In the cloistered world of miners, jokes and humor continue nonstop. Nothing is sacred. Instead of respecting Barrios’s delicate dilemma, the miners plumbed it for every ounce of laughter, teasing and taunting without malice—simply as part of the daily conversation.

  DAY 24: SUNDAY, AUGUST 29

  Six days after first contact via Pedro Gallo’s rudimentary phone, now the main channel of communications with the miners, demands from below increased. The miners wanted, needed, pleaded to speak to their families. The rescue leaders scheduled very brief voice contact: each family would have sixty seconds with their loved one, as recommended by the psychologist Iturra.

  The miners were indignant. After having spoken with President Piñera and Minister Golborne for well over an hour in total, now they would collectively receive just thirty-three minutes for what was their most important call to date? When the calls began, so, too, did a new round of problems.

  “I was talking on the phone and Iturra was saying, ‘Cut, cut, cut’ and I was like, what are you talking about? That is not even one minute. Then he said, ‘Cut or I cut you off.’ I thought, what an asshole; that gave me an idea of his mentality.” Samuel Ávalos accused Iturra of being overly strict and possessive of the miners. “He wanted to impose his terms on the group. We were never going to accept that. . . . We were a group, for better or worse a family.”

  Initially the miners agreed to a two-hour daily conference call in which Iturra and doctors peppered them with questions—an attempt to build a psychological profile of the group and its individual members. As the miners regained weight and strength, however, their antagonism to the daily sessions increased. “They say they are not sick and they do not want to talk to doctors or psychologists,” said Dr. Díaz.

  The new level of communications also began to seed a crop of controversies and conflicts. Family feuds above ground threatened to spill into the letters and conversations with the miners. No one knew how much more mental stress the miners could take—one miner losing his mind had the potential to infect the entire group. Rescuers worried that panic attacks or violence could engulf the miners in a collective state where reason and order vanished.

  With dozens of letters flowing in both directions every day, the psychological team led by Iturra instituted a strict policy. All letters from the miners would be read before being released to the families. Similarly, any letter intended for the miners would also be read by a team of psychologists who spent the days going through stacks of tightly folded, handwritten missives.

  Nick Kanas, a longtime adviser to NASA, was critical of the censorship and Big Brother mentality. “I would not screen anything . . . otherwise you are setting up a basis for mistrust. The miners will then start asking, ‘What else are they hiding from us?’ They will know they are not getting the full story and will want to know why.”

  As it was, tensions rose quickly. José Ojeda did not believe that letters were lost or delayed, as government officials tried to explain. “This is like a jail; they censor everything,” he wrote. “We were better off before we had communications.” That letter was never shown to his family but was stashed away by the psychologists.

  “Sometimes they would add words or they would rewrite the letters,” said the miner Carlos Barrios. “I know my grandmother’s handwriting.” Barrios began to talk about a strike. The miners would present a united front to the invisible commanders above. For Barrios, the entire incident highlighted psychologist Iturra’s patronizing attitude, an attitude that united the men. “They thought we were ignorant,” said Barrios. “They never understood us.”

  EIGHT

  THE MARATHON

  DAY 26: TUESDAY, AUGUST 31

  As the gray van threaded its way through the crowd of cameramen and photographers at Camp Hope, family members of the trapped miners lined the roadway and cheered. Inside the van, six specialists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) stared out in wonder. Having been trained in the comparatively sterile and highly regimented bureaucracy of the U.S. space program, the sight of dozens of women shouting at them in Spanish while hundreds of journalists jostled to take their picture was like arriving on another planet.

  The news of the miners’ survival underground for seventeen days had stunned the world, as had the Chilean expertise in drilling holes and marshaling mining equipment that had led to contact being made with the trapped men. But now with the men beginning to receive meals and medicine, an entirely new challenge arose: maintaining their psychological health. Rescue leaders at all levels were floundering in uncharted regions of the human psyche. In acknowledgment of the unique characteristics of the San José mine disaster, President Piñera sent aides to find expert consultants with relevant experience. They came back to the president with two recommendations: astronauts and submariners.

  Chile’s space program was limited to one man, Klaus von Storch of the Chilean Air Force. Von Storch was a die-hard optimist who had patiently sat on NASA’s standby astronaut list for more than a decade before giving up. Although the Atacama Desert placed Chile at the forefront of world astronomy, manned space flight was light-years away from the nation’s fiscal reality. So with no local data to call upon, the Chilean embassy in Washington, D.C., contacted officials at NASA, who were delighted to share decades of studying human behavior in confined, stressful situations. The team at Camp Hope included Dr. Al Holland, a psychologist with vast experience in extreme living conditions ranging from the deep space of Apollo missions to deep-freeze environments in Antarctica.

  The NASA specialists huddled with Chile’s recently formed team, which included psychologists, nutritionists, mining engineers and Renato Navarro, a commander with the Chilean submarine fleet who had been brought in to share his experience of managing men in confined environments. “The submarine has water outside; the miners have a seven-hundred-meter [2,300-foot] high column of rock,” he said. “The sense of confinement is the same.”

  Known to psychologists as “Situations of Extreme Confinement,” the living conditions of the thirty-three miners presented so many logistical and mental health issues that the support staff at the mine now swelled
to include a total of three hundred professionals, including a physics professor, a mapmaker and an avalanche survivor. Also on staff was Edmundo Ramírez, a chef brought in to prepare the meals sent down to the miners. The visiting dignitaries from NASA were the latest in a stream of foreign experts, but even with ten professionals for each trapped miner, many questions could not be answered.

  “This is an unprecedented situation and effort,” said Michael Duncan, a NASA psychologist, speaking inside a tent at the San José mine. “To my knowledge, never before have this many men been found so deep underground. The fact that they were found such a long time after the collapse and found alive was remarkable.”

  The NASA officials lauded the Chilean rescue effort and suggested minor changes to the protocol, including additional vitamin D and better artificial lighting to stimulate the body’s reaction to the cycles of day and night. The NASA team also emphasized that simple daily activities like playing cards, reading and watching movies were crucial to avoiding a monotonous existence. NASA officials refused to release many details of their final five-hour briefing, but participants in that meeting with NASA said the U.S. space agency had vigorously promoted the importance of organizing the miners in a strict—almost corporate—hierarchy. Voting and group decision making had worked fine for seventeen days, but now, NASA stressed, the men needed to be prepared for a race with different stages—in the words of NASA, “a marathon.”

  NASA officials also told the rescue leaders to prepare for a rebellion. “They said that during one of the Skylab missions, the astronauts had an argument with their commanders [and] became so upset that they cut off communications with the commanders,” recounted Dr. Jorge Diaz. “For a day the astronauts orbited [Earth] and no one could contact them.”

  The Chilean psychiatrist Dr. Figueroa echoed this sentiment. “Following the euphoria of being discovered, the normal psychological reaction would be for the men to collapse in a combination of fatigue and stress,” he explained. Dr. Figueroa had been hired by the Chilean Ministry of the Interior to report on the mental health care being provided to the miners and their families. “There are approximately fifteen percent of the miners who could develop long-term psychological damage from this event. This is where the government is very dedicated to strongly supporting the people to prevent these long-term psychological problems. The most important thing is to open a channel of communications, a prescribed time when the miners can send messages.”