Alejandro Acosta

English 2

College of the Desert

Professor Lewenstein

April 2, 2019

 

Underground Tragedy: The 33 Chilean Miners Miracle Rescue

    The 33 is a really important life lesson based on a true story. Back in 2010 Chile suffered something truly devastating. 33 miners had gotten trapped underground in a mine more the 2,000 meters down with very little food and no sunlight. At the time only the miners themselves knew they were all alive, but everyone else watching thought they were dead. All the family members could do is pray and wish for the best. That was until the drill made it past the roof where the miners were at. The miners were able to tape a piece of paper to the drill letting the whole word know they were alive. The saddest part about this movie is that all of this could’ve been prevented if the business owners weren’t so selfish. All they wanted was money and they didn’t care about the safety of their workers. If the money they were wasting wasn’t making any profit, then they didn’t want to assume that cost. Spending money on safety procedures could not only have recused the miners a lot faster but, it could have also prevented the tragedy from happening in the first place, in the end saving everyone time and money. Although the miners were down for so long, the rescue team did manage to recover each and every miner underground. Now that they will learn from It and prevent it from ever happening again.

    Throughout the movie The 33, the rescue team had trouble reaching the miners without the walls collapsing or without something going wrong. It wasn’t easy even with the high advanced technology that the rescue team had. In fact, one of the drills even broke because it couldn’t handle all of the work being done. Although it delayed the drilling back a few days they managed to get it working again. President Sebastián Piñera said, “The last thing we need is these men dying with the whole world watching.” 33 men in the ground, 300 mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, watching and they were their only hope. All the family members could do at the time was just pray and have faith that the rescue team was going to do their job right. President Piñera knew that if the miners didn’t make it out alive, it would cause lots of drama for the Chilean government. This meant they needed to try their absolute best to get them out without and dilemmas stopping them.

    While they were underground trapped for more than two months, the 33 men were so close yet so far away from their family members. One of the 33 miners even almost missed the birth of his daughter if it wasn’t for telecommunication. If it wasn’t for advanced technology, they wouldn’t have even been alive today. Who would’ve ever thought back in the 1900’s that someone trapped more than 2,000 feet underground was not only going to be able to get out alive but also be able to communicate with the rescue team and let them know exactly what was going on? That’s exactly what happened in 2010. It took 17 days before the rescue teams could reach the minors. They used a massive U.S. made Schramm Tr130 drill to penetrate the collapsed rock (“Coloradan Runs Drill”). Although the whole world knew the story of the 33 miners being rescued, Patricia Riggen made an amazing job with the suspense. Leaving the viewers questioning if weather or not the miners were going to get out.

    At a certain point in the movie, the rescue teams were able to establish communication channels with the trapped miners. This gave the miners hope to keep fighting on. They understood help was coming on the way and were willing to do anything to help speed up the process from the mine. Luis Urzua found out that the Schramm Tr130 drill was coming to close to some iron support beams. If the drill were to hit the beam, it would’ve been a goner. The miners decided they wanted to clear that beam themselves from underground with some controlled explosions, but the rescue team thought it wasn’t going to be safe. Lucky for the miner their planned worked, getting the iron beam out of the way. This meant that the rescue mission was still on a go. Decked down in the colors of the Chiles national flag was Fenix, the capsule that was going to get the 33 men out. The metal cage was designed to hold the Chilean miners one by one from 700 meters below ground to the sunlight they haven’t seen in over two months. At this point in the movie the seven-hundred-thousand-ton rock is slowing moving down from right above of where the miners are at. It wasn’t a question of if the rock was going to come down but when.  They needed to get the miners as soon as the possibly can.

Figure 1 Rescue team working day in and day out trying their absolute best to get the miners out with this CR120 drill (cnn.com).

They didn’t have time to reinforce the shaft either which meant that if anything were to happen to the Fenix capsule, if its mechanism fails, or the walls of the shaft collapsed, there would have been a possibility that they weren’t going to get out. The guy that went first was going to be in the greatest danger but could also be the only one to make it out. This is when the 33 men had to decide who that man was going to be. While the Fenix capsule was making its way to the miners, they all started clapping with smiles on their face because they knew they were finally getting out. They didn’t decide who the first miner was going to be until the Fenix came through the walls.

    It ended up being Alex Vega. The boy with a new born child. Before Alex got inside the capsule, he told the other miners “See you all men, up there, okay.” On the way to the top everything was going great, the mountain was stable and so was the capsule but Just 300 meters short from the top the capsule had gotten trapped in the borehole and the rescue team had lost biometrics. The rescue team tried to then reverse the capsule to see if It would get unstuck. Lucky for Alex it did. One by one each and every miner ended up getting out safely hugging their loved ones and screaming to the world that they made it. The whole world was just so happy and joyful that the men were able to get out.

    On September 4, 2010 Layne Christensen, a Kansas based company, sent in two drillers, Jeff Hart and Matt Staffel, who had been drilling water wells in Afghanistan to support U.S. troops stationed there (Walts). With them were two other men that worked for the same company. Two weeks after the mine collapsed, Layne’s Latin American affiliate Geotech Boyles Bros. brought in a Schramm T130 tophead drill. This was the initial drill that made the discovery that the miners were indeed alive with a diameter of 5.5*. Center Rock then used their CR120 hammer with 12” x 5.375’ pilot hole opener bit to make the whole about 7” bigger in diameter. After that Center rock had to drill a hole big enough for the 22” x 13’ rescue capsule called Fenix. They used a 26” LP drill that would eventually make It all the way down. This drill is using five hammers instead of one which initially is speeding up the process. Originally the idea was that the compressed air would circulate the cuttings upward and away from the bits. Due to the weight of the drill pipe with inner RC tubes, there was concern that this reverse circulation method could not be carried through safely. Center Rock introduced the idea to the Chilean Mining Agency to let the cuttings fall through to the bottom. The proposal was accepted, and the miners worked day in and day out to remove the cuttings from that area. The engineers equipped Fenix with audio and video links to communicate with each miner during the 10- to 15-minute ascent, probes to check heart rate and other functions, and an emergency oxygen supply. “We thought, ‘What if he gets stuck?’ so it has a trapdoor that can drop out the bottom and a rope coming down,” Aguilar says (Stromburg).                      

    According to “The Guardian: Chilean miners…” Chilean miners say they were cheated out of profits from book, TV serials, and movies. When the 33 men were rescued, they were all promised so many things and so many benefits but was that really what ended up happening? Some of the 33 men’s lawyers gave them bad advice and cheated them of their profits. “The contracts we signed were not what the lawyers said they would be, for example of the $150m [£97m] paid to our company, we only received 17%,” said the group’s leader Luis Urzúa. My question is what happened to the other 83% of that money? Luis Urzúa also said that he felt he was getting rescued for the second time from his lawyers. These miners have been through enough already by being trapped underground for 69 days and now they’re being robbed and cheated off profits being made by them. Many of them felt like that had been treated with lack of respect. “That people sort of see them as these ordinary guys who accidentally got buried underground and hoped to get rich and famous off of it,” said Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Héctor Tobar (par. 12).

    The article “Traumatic effects of Chile miners” describes what being trapped for 69 days can do to a person. Some of the 33 miners have been showing signs of emotional and psychological trauma. But yet again what do we expect from someone who have been trapped for such a long time without any sunlight and in pure darkness. In Australia a group of miners were stuck underground for 10 days and even they experienced psychological problems. To make It worst, all of the attention that the 33 men are getting isn’t helping them at all. They have been offered so many things from a new job to invitations with celebrities, but this is only making them remind them more of the problem. It’s not like they can leave all of this behind them and forget it even happened because they apparently have agreed to share their story collectively in order to equally distribute any financial gain, meaning that if they want that little check of money to keep coming in, they have to keep talking about their story. “They were also coached on dealing with the media and the "ugly and indiscrete questions" that reporters might ask them once they were free.” (Writer states). At this point in time they were the what everyone was talking about. People wanted to hear more and learn more about what happened while they were underground. This meant reporters asking cruel questions just to make an article not knowing that some of these questions can bring back memories that they don’t want. These men aren’t prepared for these types of interactions. “These are miners, not movie stars,” Iturra said.

    August 5, 2010 become a day to remember. On this day 33 men got trapped in a mine more than 2,000 feet underground. Working in mines comes with a huge price to pay. Nearly 10,000 accidents are recorded every year. These accidents include suffocation, gas poisoning, roof collapse, and gas explosions. When the San Jose Mine in Chile Atacama Desert collapsed on these 33 men, nobody was sure they were alive or not. That didn’t stop them from trying to retain answers. Rescuers drilled more than a dozen holes, trying to find these men. After days of hard work and no answer, President Sebastian Piñera began plans for a giant cross to memorialize the miners. But on August 22, 2010, 17 days after they had gotten trapped, the world learned the men were alive after a drilling tool emerged from the deep with a note attached to it which said, “We are fine in the shelter, the 33 of us.”

    The movie “The 33” came out November 9, 2015. Five years after the real-life incident in Chile, which occurred in 2010. What really brought me to watch the movie was all the suspense in the trailer. I was curious how the producers of this film were going to make a movie in which everyone knew the ending to, so suspenseful. I’ve seen this movie more than once and all the times I’ve watched the movies, It had me wondering what was going to happen next. At the beginning of the movie one of the workers knew that the mine wasn’t safe and wanted inspectors to go check it out. The sad truth is that they did nothing and told workers to go back knowing there working space wasn’t safe. These types of problems occur a lot in the real world and bosses tend to ignore the issue to keep business moving.

    When the 33 miners first got trapped underground their first procedure was to go to the refuge where food and water were stored in case of an emergency. When they arrived and found what was stored, everyone got discouraged. Not only was to little for everyone, it was cans of tuna, some cookies, and greasy water intended to cool mining equipment. Imagine having to split that 33 ways for more than just a few days. They weren’t in any type of living conditions. After a few day when the drill made it through and the workers above asked what they wanted they all responded with a chela, a cold beer.

    When this first happened the 33 men were on talk shows, speaking engagements, invites to places we all dream of going but with time the public’s interest with the them started to fade. And with that so did the free trips and the money. Today many of them are struggling to make ends meet. Most of them live off government pension which is about $500 a month but that’s not even half of what they got working at the mine. After investigators did their job in finding out what happened with the mine collapse and everything with it, prosecutors in 2013 said there was not enough evidence to press criminal charges.

    In The Verge, Lizzie Plaugic Believes that the Movie The 33 was “boring”. She states how people already know the ending to the story. She also states how although the story was a good one, not all good stories needs to be made into a movie. Although she might be correct about people knowing the ending to it, IMDb (a movie rating website) rated this movie a 7 out of 10. The movie was full of suspense and full of drama. Overall the movie was a great movie but Lizzie states, “It’s probably impossible to create a film that effectively recreates the fear, hopelessness, resignation, and sheer boredom that comes with being buried alive — and if it were possible, no one would see it, because no one wants to spend their Friday night experiencing the act of waiting to die slowly.” The movie The 33 uses a lot of foreshadowing at the beginning with some of the miners being real close to escaping but staying. For example, Lizzie states how Mario Sepulveda (Antonio Banderas)  asks his boss if he can work the next day even if it’s his day off or how a young miner gets the opportunity to work somewhere else but turns it down because it “pays less” even though it’s a lot safer especially when he has a baby on the way. Even though Lizzie says all of this doesn’t make the movie any better, I believe that every little detail like this in the movie was what the movie really good.

Work Cited

“Chilean Mine Rescue – Rescue 33.” Center Rock, Inc., centerrock.com/about-us/job-stories/chilean-mine-rescue/.

Chris Kraul and Fabiola Gutierrez, Los Angeles Times. “Traumatic Effects of Chile Miners' Ordeal in Evidence.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 16 Oct. 2010, http://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-oct-16-la-fg-chile-miners-rescue-20101016-story.html.

 “Coloradan Runs Drill That Reaches Chilean Miners.” The Denver Post, The Denver Post, 5 May 2016, http://www.denverpost.com/2010/10/09/coloradan-runs-drill-that-reaches-chilean-miners/.

Plaugic, Lizzie. “The 33 Trivializes the Chilean Mining Accident, and It's Also Boring.” The Verge, 13 Nov. 2015, http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/13/9723680/the-33-movie-review-chile-miners-banderas.

Stromberg, Joseph. “The Capsule That Saved the Chilean Miners.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 1 Jan. 2012, www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/the-capsule-that-saved-the-chilean-miners-5620851/.

“Two thousand twelve Chilean Mine Rescue Fast Facts.” CNN, Cable News Network, 27 Feb. 2019, http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/13/world/americas/chilean-mine-rescue/index.html.

Watts, Jonathan. “Chilean Miners Say They Were Cheated out of Profits from Hollywood Film.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 3 Nov. 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/03/chilean-miners-cheated-out-of-profits-hollywood-film-the-33.