by Kate
14. October 2010 08:50
In a blog post earlier this year we featured a story about the 33 miners in Chile trapped underground in a copper mine with a meagre supply of food, water and medicine while they waiting for the Chilean rescue team to construct a rescue tunnel.
Well, after 10 long weeks underground these miners have now been rescued! They’re out of their hellish predicament and back above land again.
The miners embraced their family members who were there eagerly waiting to welcome them back. A missile-shaped rescue capsule was designed to go deep underground to rescue the miners who had been subjected to 68 days of damp, heat, doubt and fear.
One of the miners, 40-year-old Mario Sepulveda, gave the surrounding officials and rescuers some rocks as an ironic gift. Later on, he reflected: “I have been with God and with the devil. I fought between the two. I seized the hand of God, it was the best hand. I always knew God would get us out of there,"
The 32 Chilean and 1 Bolivian miners have become heroes and media stars in Chile, almost in their own absence, and it’s likely that they’ll become even more so now that they have been rescued until the frenzy dies down.
The mining accident helped to highlight the lax mining controls in Chile, the world’s top copper producer, while at the same time showing that the country is mature enough in terms of machinery and expertise to successfully pull off one of the most challenging mine rescues in history.