33 Men (21 page)

Entering the capsule with headphones strapped to his ears, Guatemalan crooner Ricardo Arjona singing in his head, Villarroel said he felt a sadness. “It was painful to see my friends below as I was leaving them.” But as the capsule drew toward the surface, Villarroel began to scream with joy. He cursed the mine. “Then I felt a change in the air. Fresh air—that was my favorite moment. . . . What a difference.”

For a worldwide audience estimated at one billion viewers, the Chilean mine rescue was picture perfect. The grainy video footage from underground seemed like a live shot from another planet. To many viewers, the drama and collective excitement was reminiscent of the first Apollo landing in 1969, when Neil Armstrong took those famous first steps on the surface of the moon.

At the bottom of the mine, however, the script was unraveling.

At 1:30
am
, as the capsule came down to pick up Omar Reygadas, miner number 17, a sharp crack echoed through the tunnel. Then came the crash of boulders and the rumble of an avalanche. The camera filming the rescue went blank. Now Operation San Lorenzo was blind.

At the head of the telecommunications post, Pedro Gallo immediately called by intercom to the miners below. He asked Pedro Cortés, who had helped wire the underground telecommunications hookup, to investigate. Cortés was hesitant; the fiber-optic cable was close to the recent avalanche. The dust had not even settled and now he was being asked to enter a potentially deadly zone of the tunnel.

“You're sending me down there? You know it's not safe in there. There've been two avalanches,” Cortés stammered. Earlier in the year he had lost a finger inside the mine; now he was being asked to risk far more.

Gallo told him that a live video feed was crucial. The winch operators needed to see the operation live so they could gently guide the capsule to the ground. A rough landing could damage or jam the Phoenix. President Piñera and approximately one out of every four adults on the planet were watching.

Cortés reluctantly agreed to run the ultimate obstacle course. He would have to negotiate a gauntlet of falling rock from the recently collapsed roof, cracked and still cracking walls and then traverse a muddy 200-yard stretch. As he followed the fiber-optic cable, Cortés found the problem: a rock fall had sliced the
cable.

There was no possibility of repairing the damage. Hundreds of pounds of rocks had buried and destroyed the line. Gallo thought for a moment and then figured out an instant solution: he could take a cable that fed the camera in the safety refuge some 1,000 feet below, disconnect it from that camera and have the miners rewire that same live fiber-optic cable to the main camera filming the rescue.

Gallo called down to the phone in the refuge and was shocked when Franklin Lobos picked up. Lobos was alone at the far end of the tunnel that had already suffered two avalanches. “Franklin! What are you doing there?”

“It's my shift. I'm receiving the food for the rescue workers,” said Lobos, loyal and stoic. “Duty is duty and it is my turn. I have to complete the shift.”

“Old man, you're nuts! There have been two collapses! Get out of there. Now,” Gallo screamed into the phone.

“But the food? What about the food for the rescuers?” Lobos was stuck on protocol, unconcerned or unaware of the looming danger.

“Forget about it,” Gallo yelled. “I'll send food down in the capsule. Get out!”

As Gallo scrambled to configure a new fiber-optic system, President Piñera, Televisión Nacional de Chile and Otto, the winch operator, all had the same urgent question: What happened to the image?

Gallo told Piñera and Otto the truth—that they had lost the signal and were working to reestablish a live image of the miners below. To TVN he simply reloaded a video clip from earlier in the rescue. “They were going crazy that there was no image, so I took some earlier shots and put those on the air. Then I asked them if they had image and they said thanks.” A billion viewers around the world were also tricked. They never realized that the image of perfection being broadcast was a rerun to cover up a dramatic chapter far too risky for the Chilean government to allow the world to see. Like all reality television, the miner drama also required sleight of hand, editing and a script.

But there was no putting the actual rescue on hold. Beginning with Omar Reygadas, three miners were raised to safety without the benefit of live video from below.

“My ride up was pretty anxious,” said Omar Reygadas, the seventeenth man to be rescued. As Reygadas was preparing to enter the Phoenix, the door jammed. Rescue workers could not get it open. Using a crowbar, they pried the metal mesh door open. “I thought the mine did not want me to leave,” said Reygadas. “After they pried it open, they could not get it shut, so they used a plastic strap. I held the door as I went up so it would not open.”

As the capsule rose, Reygadas began to taunt and joke with his companions below. “I was yelling to the guys below things like ‘Fuck, I am out of here. I made it. I made it! I made it.' ” Despite the overwhelming joy, Reygadas also felt an instant nostalgia for his underground world. “We were leaving something behind. We had lived there for a long time. I had a feeling that I was leaving part of myself inside there. It was sixty-nine days. Part of me stayed down there. I told myself that it would be my bad characteristics and that I would arrive at the surface with all my best characteristics.”

Reygadas, a widower, was eager to hug and greet what he calls his “little monkeys,” a troop of grandchildren. As he neared the surface, Reygadas began to scream to the rescue workers above. He would yell, “Chi . . . Chi . . . Chi . . .” and the responding “Le . . . Le . . . Le” was confirmation that he was nearly safe. “I heard a voice from above asking if I was okay, and I screamed, ‘Fuck yes,' then I remembered the president was up there. . . .”

While Reygadas celebrated with his “little monkeys,” Pedro Gallo had to ask Cortés below to attempt another suicidal mission. This time, instead of skirting death halfway down the tunnel, to the fiber-optic station, Gallo asked him to run the entire 400 yards to the safety refuge, disconnect the cable and rewire the camera.

“Don't send me again,” Cortés pleaded. Then he agreed to again run the gauntlet. But first he wanted to say goodbye. Cortés put his face close to a second camera that was operating underground and said, “If something happens to me, here I am for the last time.”

Gallo shivered with fear. He had sent Cortés on the mission; now he felt the weight of fate. If Cortés was crushed, maimed or killed, it would be on his conscience.

The avalanche had not sealed the tunnel—a fact confirmed when an exhausted Franklin Lobos arrived from below. He told Cortés that there was enough room to get by the two rock slides, wished him luck and prepared for his own escape. Cortés did not question the order; instead he prayed for his life, and prepared for one last trip to the refuge.

In a mine known to attract kamikaze miners, Cortés would now defy the gods a second time. Even under normal conditions the mine was capable of killing and maiming. Now, in this final act, it was ever more unstable and dangerous. Cortés survived the nearly hour-long journey and returned to a hero's welcome.

“I had his life in my hands,” admitted Gallo, who at that point had been awake for more than forty-eight hours straight. “But it was a duty, and he had to carry it out.”

With the cable in hand, Cortés and Ticona connected the camera. Then Gallo reminded them that TVN was broadcasting a “live shot” that showed an empty screen—no capsule, no people. In reality, a number of miners and rescuers were waiting and milling about. If Gallo suddenly flipped to the real action, he would blow the charade as figures suddenly popped up on a few hundred million TV screens.

The stage was cleared, the live shot hooked back in, and then miners and rescuers were allowed to wander back into the shot. “They never noticed,” said Gallo with pride.

With increasing concern about the stability of the mountain, the rescue was speeded up. Instead of a leisurely pace, Operation San Lorenzo took on a new urgency. Bringing the first sixteen men to the surface had been a showcase to the world of Chilean efficiency and international cooperation. Now the vengeful mountain was threatening to drag the worldwide audience into a
Titanic
-sized tragedy. If a landslide were to smother the men at this last moment, it would also bury and kill a rare moment of global optimism. The atmosphere inside the mine still appeared cheery—music and balloons still bounced off the walls, but the sensation that the irate mine had one last round of surprises for the men was pervasive.

Esteban Rojas

Pablo Rojas

Darío Segovia

Yonni Barrios

Samuel Ávalos

Carlos Bugueño

José Henríquez

Renán Ávalos

Claudio Acuña

The rescue plan had been designed to include rescue workers trained both in the techniques of climbing and also in battlefield medicine. The Chilean Navy had sent two Marine Special Forces commandos with extensive medical background; they could handle any medical emergency and were loaded with everything from a locked box containing morphine to a needle loaded with anti-anxiety drugs. But in deference to local sentiment, Minister Golborne at the last moment broke with protocol and instead allowed Pedro Rivero, a local rescue worker, to rush to the bottom of the mine to help out. Rivero had risked his life in early attempts to find the miners and was a representative of the regional rescue corps. No one could question his bravery or his technical rescue skills. His timing, however, could not have been worse. With military-like precision, the entire rescue protocol had long been decided; now, Rivero's improvisational appearance sent a sliver of chaos into the finely tuned procedures.

Rivero stepped from the capsule and immediately caused problems. He brandished a camera, started filming and headed into the depths of the mine, the same tunnel that had just collapsed twice. Rivero's mission was, according to Pedro Gallo, who watched the whole scene, to film the last scenes in the refuge. None of the miners or rescue workers thought this was sensible. “Never rescue a rescue worker” was a motto for the entire team. With avalanches already threatening the integrity of the operation, an added risk like that taken by Rivero was seen as mad.

When Rivero returned, he asked for the phone and declared that he had been sent on a special mission by Golborne himself; now it would be his job to stay below until the end. According to Rivero, he would be the last man out. The navy men were dumbstruck. From a military point of view, Rivero's actions were close to treason.

A raging argument broke out. The navy men threatened to stuff Rivero into the capsule by force.

As he coordinated phone calls with Pedro Gallo, Cortés heard the raging argument nearby and was stunned by its source.

“What's happening?” Cortés asked Gallo. “The rescuers are arguing; didn't they come here to rescue us?” The miners gathered to watch the bizarre spectacle.

A call from Golborne came down. Rivero was summoned to explain his rebellion to the authorities above. Rivero stayed firm and refused to take the call. Gallo wondered if the commandos would have to stuff the feisty Rivero into the Phoenix, but in the end words were sufficient.

As Rivero reluctantly approached the Phoenix, the commandos grabbed his bag of souvenirs—rocks and minerals from the depths of the mine. They dumped out the rocks, handed back the empty sack and made it clear that Rivero was leaving the scene. Rivero entered the Phoenix of his own accord, and then in a final act of defiance slammed the metal mesh door shut. The miners watched in shock as Rivero slipped up and out of sight. Thanks to the luxury of seven live cameras, judicious editing and Pedro Gallo, the world saw not a single second of this center stage drama.

With Rivero and his scandal out of the way, the rescue entered the final phase. Franklin Lobos was the twenty-seventh miner to be hauled up. As the capsule climbed, he heard a deep rumbling. The crash of rock. Was the shaft compromised? How close was that one? Acoustics inside the mine were tricky. Sometimes a conversation seemed to drift down the tunnels and arrive like a whisper. Other times a vacuum appeared to suck away the words from a colleague nearby. Lobos was sure this crash was close. “It sounded like a whole level came down,” he said.

At 7:20
pm
, when he made it safely to the surface, Lobos was met by his daughter Carolina. He grabbed her in a tight hug. She spread her open palms across his face; for a moment they stared into each other's eyes. Carolina then handed her father a new soccer ball. He took the cue and began a dexterous display of foot juggling. Lobos's new life had begun. He would never be the same person who entered the mine ten weeks earlier. Even the smallest rituals of normalcy were now delicious.

Inside the triage hospital, an entire wall was covered with the names of the miners and the rescuers. Each time the Phoenix surfaced, a name was checked off. The celebration was beginning.

Family members crowded at bedsides to hold hands with the still-stunned miners. A cacophony of ringing cell phones, the echo of backslapping hugs and the bustle of a hundred people inside the makeshift clinic was interrupted every half hour as the latest rescued miner was wheeled in to a chorus of cheers. Doctors hugged F16 pilots. Nurses posed with submarine commanders. Paramedics, geologists and mapmakers embraced for what was likely the last time. After months of constant teamwork and nonstop contact, the battle was nearly over.

Richard Villarroel

Juan Aguilar

Raúl Bustos

Pedro Cortés

Ariel Ticona

The list of successful rescues continued. By 9:30
pm,
all but the last miner had been extricated.

Once again, the Phoenix descended deep into the mine, the prison in which thirty-three men had been trapped for over two months. At the bottom of the mine, Urzúa stepped carefully into the capsule. He took a look around and then was headed up. His mission was nearly complete.