Experience the 33 miners trapped for 17 days
It will take four months to get them out

SANTIAGO DE CHILE – After 17 days of anxiety, families and colleagues of the 33 miners trapped at a depth of 700 meters in a copper and gold mine in the Chilean Atacama desert can return to hope: a message written on a piece of paper sent with the probe that reached the shelter where they sheltered announced that they are all alive. President Sebastian Pinera confirmed this, rushing to the site, 830 kilometers north of Santiago: when the probe reached -700 meters, signs of life began to leak, before the shots hit the steel tube, then finally the piece of paper “came from the bowels of the earth”, as Pinera said, waving triumphantly. “They tell us they are alive, they tell us they are united”,

The message confirms the hopes of the technicians: at the time of the landslide that caused the mine to collapse, the miners managed to reach one of the shelters set up along the tunnels, with supplies and oxygen. This is why they managed to survive from August 5th to today, in the hot gallery during the day and very cold at night, four and a half kilometers inside the mine, with 700 meters of rock above them.

Now the second phase of rescue begins: we need to be able to get them out as soon as possible. But it is a difficult task: to dig a tunnel that reaches them, it will take at least four months, the technicians have already calculated. Meanwhile, a new larger diameter probe will be sent down to supply them with food, light and air. They will have to last much longer.

(August 22, 2010)