Chile miners: Accidental celebrities

Among the famous faces of 2010, the 33 miners rescued in Chile in October became the unlikeliest of celebrities as their death-defying survival tale and heroic rescue captivated the world.

Stardom is a mantle they are still learning to wear, but they are in a safer financial position now after creating their own company this month as they try to cash in on their extraordinary story.

In Chile, the group incarnate the triumph of hope amid bookends of tragedy: An earthquake in February that killed 521 people, and an inferno in a Santiago prison in December that cost 81 inmates their lives.

Internationally, the 33 threw a focus on Chilean ingenuity and on an unlikely salvation that had all the hallmarks of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Their drama began when an ordinary working day on August 5 was interrupted by a shock cave-in that left the men stranded and despairing deep down inside a remote copper mine in Chile’s Atacama desert.

“First we felt the rocks fall, then came an underground wind that lifted a lot of dust. We thought we’d never get out of there,” said Jimmy Sanchez, who at 19 was the youngest of the trapped group.

During the next 17 days, the men waited in a shelter in the dark, dank tunnel, slowly resigning themselves to what looked like a slow death.

A lot of that period still remains shrouded in a “pact of silence” the men have agreed, but they have hinted at some of what happened: the sobbing, the recriminations, also solidarity and encouragement.

As hunger snapped at them, meagre rations were doled out in minuscule amounts – two teaspoons of canned tuna and half-a-glass of milk every 48 hours, and water from a cavern trickle.

“Seeing that half-glass, it was enough to make you crazy. We were going out of our heads,” Mr Sanchez said.

“I was between God and the Devil,” said another miner, Mario Sepulveda.

But instead of another mine disaster with a tragic outcome, Chile’s experience became a redemptive lesson for the world.

On August 22, a probe drill hauled up to the surface had a note attached to it from theminers: “We’re all well, all 33 in the shelter.”

A Herculean operation was then started, with water, food and medicine dropped to the men.

Initially, it was thought the group had no chance of rescue before Christmas. But then three escape shafts were dug, and the timetable accelerated.

Finally, on October 13, the 33 men were pulled up to the surface one by one in an unprecedented exercise involving a specially made metal capsule, dubbed the Phoenix.

Transfixed viewers around the world echoed the intense explosion of joy and relief as mission impossible became one of history’s greatest rescues.

Two months later, the men have travelled to Hollywood and Europe to feature on television shows, they have been given VIP access to top football games, and some, like Mr Sepulveda and Omar Reygadas, give motivational speeches.

According to Albert Iturra, the head of the team providing psychological care to the miners, 14 of the men have been freed from the programme to resume their lives, and half the group is ready to return to work.

Some have gotten used to the bright lights of television, while others have preferred to step back into anonymity.

“There are also a few who are a little jealous of the others’ fame,” Mr Iturra explained.

But despite initial nightmares and – for a few – succor sought in alcohol, overall the men “are doing extraordinary well,” he said, adding that now, “whatever it takes, they have to return to reality”.