The 33 Trapped Chilean Miners Were Rescued
On this day · 13 October 2010
After 69 days half a mile underground, all 33 men rose one by one through a borehole barely wider than their shoulders.
On 5 August 2010, a section of the San Jose copper and gold mine near Copiapo, in Chile’s Atacama Desert, caved in and sealed 33 men roughly 2,300 feet underground. For 17 days no one above knew whether anyone had survived, until a probe returned to the surface carrying a scrawled note: “Estamos bien en el refugio los 33” — all 33 are fine in the shelter.
What followed became a national project. Nearly every Chilean government ministry mobilised, the state mining firm Codelco coordinated drilling, and outside help arrived from NASA and international corporations. Crews bored and reinforced a narrow escape shaft, then lowered a purpose-built steel capsule named Fenix down to the trapped men.
After 69 days, the miners stepped out of the tiny capsule and into the embrace of a cheering world.
On 13 October 2010, the rescue began hauling the miners up one at a time on a roughly 15-minute ride to the surface. An estimated 1 billion people watched live. All 33 emerged alive — the longest anyone had survived trapped underground in recorded history.
Sources & references
3 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 3 independent sources.
