Chile celebrated the miracle, soon seeing images of their bearded loved ones through cameras lowered through the narrow boreholes. But the ordeal was just beginning, as families learned that the miners might not even be above ground to celebrate Christmas and officials initially considered not even telling the men their rescue would take so long. Why so long to rescue the crew in this age of modern technology?
Depth
To understand how deep underground the miners are, the Empire State Building is 1,250 feet high. The miners are roughly half a mile below surface at the 2,300-foot depth. Not to mention, sectors of the mine are likely already unstable from the collapse that trapped the crew in the first place.
The rescue shaft will be 26 inches wide. The first drill of the rescue shaft only produced a width of 12 inches, so the drill needs to keep working to widen the hole.
The rock
The terrain at the mine, which is in the arid Atacama desert, consists of medium-hard diorite rock. The collapse happened at about 1,300 feet, so the miners were well below that in an area of their own pockets of air and passageways. The igneous rock walls of the mine have moist clay packed in the grooves that has contributed to the damp, warm environment in which the miners were trapped. Unlike a coal mine, though, there's no risk of the miners succumbing to toxic gases while waiting for rescue.
Collapse risks
The makeup of the rock and the mine structure -- along with the halt in any new mining activity -- means the probability of another shaft collapse while waiting for rescue is quite low. But the miners aren't just waiting to be rescued: Working in 24 hours shifts, they're clearing away the debris falling into their safe area through the rescue drilling operations. When the rescue shaft is wide enough, miners will have to slowly be brought to the surface one at a time in a reinforced steel capsule that will shield then from falling rocks, as well as supply the miner with enough oxygen for the three-hour journey. Rescuing all of the miners, at this careful and steady pace, is expected to take four days.
Safety violations
The miners tried to escape through a ventilation shaft at the beginning of their ordeal, but the ladder that should have been there to aid them was missing. The shaft collapsed as they tried to escape. The company owner ended up apologizing to the families for the safety issues, and the mine accident brought a new level of government scrutiny to operations in the country where copper alone provides one-third of government revenue. Nearly three dozen miners die each year in accidents.
Empresa Minera San Esteban, which owns the copper and gold mine, had been fined for safety violations numerous times leading up to the accident. Several deaths also occurred. The August accident has shone a light on lax mining oversight in the country by overworked inspectors: 18 mines were ordered to close in the days following the accident.
How do they stay sane waiting so long?
The miners have already broken the record for surviving underground. Chile has employed help from outlets such as NASA -- whose astronauts also get stuck in small spaces for extended periods of time -- to come up with strategies intended to help the miners cope with the wait. Lights have been fed into the rescue shelter that simulate day and night schedules. Good leaders among the trapped miners have also kept order and helped keep their colleagues healthy. Some of the miners are already talking about writing a book, and is there any doubt that there's going to be a film version? Or even just one movie?But the miners are also being prepared for the onslaught of media attention once they reach the surface. Via the TV by which the miners are also being entertained during their extended stay, psychologist Alberto Iturra told Agence France-Presse that the crew will get instruction in "remaining poised during an interview, asking the interviewer to repeat the question if they don't understand it, and how to say that they prefer not to answer." Psychologists have even been screening notes that families send down to the trapped miners, and health experts were brought in to establish a fitness program suitable for the 600-square-foot chamber (think small than your one-bedroom apartment) in which the miners safely wait. But that part's not just for sanity (or vanity) purposes: None of the miners can have a waist larger than 35 inches to fit in the steel capsule that will extract them through the rescue hole.
