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Buried Alive
The True Story of the Chilean Mining Disaster and the Extraordinary Rescue at Camp Hope
By Manuel Pino Toro Palgrave Macmillan
Copyright © 2011 C. A. Press (Penguin Group)
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-230-12037-2
CHAPTER 1
THE ILL-FATED SHIFT
Ximena Fuentealba shredded a piece of chicken and arranged the pieces lengthwise on a fresh pan batido she had just brought, nice and crispy, from the bakery. Pan batido is the name in several provinces of Chile, especially in the north, for a white-flour roll, baked with its surface split and ready to break open and eat in two halves. Called marraqueta in Santiago, it is a staple food on the Chilean menu. If, soon after a child is born, the family begins to do well, they say, "The baby arrived with themarraqueta under its arm."
With great care, Ximena carefully made each sandwich, one after another, stacking them in dozens, which she would bring as part of the meal for the workers in the San José mine. She wrapped them in white paper napkins and stacked them almost without looking, for she knew from long experience in the art of cooking that she had each one just right. As usual, at one P.M. she had the workers' lunches all ready.
Standing in the kitchen, just a few yards from the mine, Ximena glanced at her watch and stepped up her pace. At two, the day shift got off—her spoiled brats, who devoured everything she made for them. "Ximenita," they said, "you have a 'nun's touch' with cooking ..." She heard the words often, and they filled her with pride. And why shouldn't they? It was a well-known fact that nuns were gifted at baking. She couldn't fail her boys.
Today, August 5, twenty minutes remained before the bell signaled the shift change, and everything was just the same as always.
But suddenly, the kitchen—built in a shipping container—began to shudder. A strange, powerful jostling of the earth, followed by a deafening crash, made Ximena gasp.
A tremor, she thought at once—after all, Chile was seismically active, and the country had just dug out of the February 27, 2010 earthquake, which devastated the southern region.
The sound bounced in all directions, and she felt as if the cavernous booming were too close, like something from a horror movie involving demonic possession. It was as if the earth beside her were writhing inside its own skin. The cracking, grinding noise wouldn't stop.
Ximena dropped the kitchen knife on the table and strode outside to see what the hell was going on. A thick cloud of dust had billowed up from the mouth of the mine. It looked like the scene of a disaster, bringing to memory images of the bombardment of the presidential palace back on September 11, 1973.
The passage of time seemed mangled and uncertain—there was simply too much going on. The mining equipment operators, like Ximena, were running back and forth. The sirens blared without a break, and panic overran the barren site out in the middle of the Atacama Desert, a few miles from the northern city of Copiapó.
"It's a planchón! ... A planchón!" she shouted in desperation, using the miners' jargon meaning "snowfield"—a collapse inside a mine shaft or tunnel.
After the roaring crash, nothing. From inside the mine, only dust and silence; from this side, sirens and shouting and chaos. No one knew whether the workers on the shift managed to escape or lay entombed in a hell world of broken stone.
Overcome by anxiety and desperation, Ximena stood frozen in place. She reached up to smooth her hair, as if that ordinary movement might help dissipate her uneasiness. She steeled herself, gathered her wits, and prepared to render aid. Behind her, in the lunchroom, lay a box piled with sandwiches that would never be eaten.
The workers who had gathered on the surface were dashing off in all directions, bumping into each other and stumbling over their own feet, yelling, not knowing which way to go, while dust floated above them, as if mocking their useless efforts.
Now Ximena began to fear the worst. The crash held her paralyzed beside the shipping-container lunchroom. With her hair now in place, her hands flew to her mouth, as if to keep her heart from jumping out of her throat. She held out hope, but the silence from inside the mine filled her with dismay. Her hands went to her forehead, as if beseeching God and the Virgin. The seconds ticked by and became minutes, and from the other side there was still only silence.
Overwhelmed, she thought, The only thing for certain is that something terrible has happened.
In Copiapó, the horrible news spread like flood waters, starting with the mine's own people. The owners tried to hold the news back, but as usually happens, the truth proved irrepressible.
HURRY ... HURRY
Worry grew and built on itself and multiplied among the Atacama's inhabitants. Conversations traveled in a thousand directions, repeated by those just learning of the accident—an accident that almost nothing was known about.
"The shit hit the fan, Papá. The niños didn't get out."
José Vega grew very still. "What's that, son?"
"The mine collapsed, and they don't know how many were in there. Only a miracle can save them."
"But ... who told you?"
"It's on the radio."
Like Ximena, José Vega could not—did not want to—believe the awful news he had just heard in the flat, dry voice of his son Jonathan, telling him that his other son Alex was trapped in a collapsed mine. It hit him like an airplane hitting a mountainside, and his face showed it. Shaken and queasy, he silently mouthed the words that kept repeating over and over in his mind: It's terrible, it's the worst ...
With a force that he seemed not to notice, he held the telephone clamped against his right ear, hearing his own pulse as he felt his blood pressure ramp up. In the sepulchral silence, he bit his nails in anger, in dread, in a flood of anguish.
At the other end of the line, Jonathan's voice rose with anxiety. "Papá, Papá ... talk to me!"
Without replying, José Vega hung up the phone. The seasoned miner, seventy years old, was alone in his house in Arturo Prat de Copiapó, a town named after Chile's great naval hero. The rest of the family was out and about, running the usual errands on what should have been just another cold winter's day in early August.
The telephone began to ring insistently, but José was mired in a lethargy that made even standing up difficult. He felt impassive, powerless. In his mind he had traveled to the mine, which by happenstance bore his name, to join the crew of miners who, rumor had it, were trapped in the bottom of the shaft.
The telephone kept ringing until Jonathan managed to make his father hear him. "What's wrong, Papá, why don't you answer?"
José's reply turned into an order that Jonathon would have to obey.
"Son, go ask your bosses to give us permission to go to the mine immediately and see what's happened to your brother. Now, scoot!" he barked, leaving no room for discussion.
"We'll go right away, Papá."
"Go. Just do it. I'm going to work out a rescue plan. We'll go see what's going on with the boys." He called them "niños," an affectionate term meaning "little boys." "We have to do something," he murmured. "And do it fast."
José Vega hung up the phone and hurried to the room in his house where he kept the tools that could help him with what he needed to do: save "los niños."
While all this was happening in the north of the country, down in Santiago radio and television programs reported in disordered, fragmentary snippets on happenings they knew almost nothing about. All the audience could gather was that just now a terrible accident had befallen a mine in the area surrounding Copiapó.
The news announcers kept repeating the same thing, stalling for time while their reporters scrambled to get on location. For the moment, vague and redundant information was all they had to fill the airwaves with, with everyone promising to comunicate something more precise and substantial, more coherent, more real, than they had so far.
All was confusion, and the news channels turned their attention to this "breaking story," as the anchors call it when they know almost nothing of what they're trying to talk about. Even hours later, no one could explain what had happened, let alone the possible consequences of the tragic event. Nothing was known in Santiago—and little more in the place where the collapse occurred.
"IT'S ABOUT BRINGING HOME THE BACON"
Cave-ins were nothing new in the San José mine. The site had been in operation for more than 125 years—since 1881, according to the highway sign erected at the entrance—and its seemingly endless access ramp spiraled down almost a half mile below the surface.
The work was intense and complex, and the older miners had complained many times that they were removing the copper and gold ore even from the very columns supporting the tons of rock above their heads. The conditions in the mines were so perilous that every moment of their day posed a risk.
The place was famous throughout the region for being poorly designed and for not taking into account the risk to the miners. But there was also another undeniable fact: this was a source of jobs—something not to be taken for granted in an area where mining was essentially the only work available and where few knew any other trade.
The ore deposits in the San José mine were complicated, tricky to get at. Its operators knew this; still, it was a good economic opportunity for some—tough, seasoned men accustomed to the perilous trade they plied deep undergound. And after all, as Chileans said, "Hay que parar la olla"—one must work and bring home the bacon.
Fire engines and an ambulance arrived at the site. Ximena Fuentealba asked one of the foremen, a man in a black leather jacket and black boots, holding a hard hat in his left hand, if he thought the miners were still alive.
"We don't know," he replied in a stern voice, without looking at her.
Out of the blue, Ximena remembered her sandwiches. They were piled on the table awaiting diners who, by all indications, weren't coming this time. The confusion of feelings pent up inside her finally let go, and she could no longer hold back the tears or calm her erratic breathing.
A couple of hours went by, and relatives of the trapped miners began to show up. They had gotten word by cell phone from the workers on the next shift, who had come in after the accident and watched the drama unfold from the surface. They were friends and acquaintances of those who remained below.
So far, no one had a clear idea of the magnitude of the event. Speculations and rumors grew, contradicting each other and sowing yet more confusion among the families and the rest of Chile, who now knew of the disaster and were attentively following the fast-traveling news.
The Chilean desert is a vast expanse full of huge mines and also many smaller excavations, and rockfalls were common. But only rarely were miners trapped. The family members who arrived at the San José site expected the rescue to be quick and that they would be able to take their loved ones home right away. Their faith was fragile, but it was still there. They didn't imagine, nor want to accept, that the entire work crew had been swallowed up underground and that this time the wait would be much longer than anyone could conceive.
"No one came out," the managers of the mine informed them. They checked and rechecked the roster of workers. There were thirty-three in the mine—too many.
The order came: "We go in carefully, because the mine's still unstable and is settling." This made it dangerous, but they had to see at what point the giant spiral staircase that followed the inside of the hill had been cut off.
"Does anyone know if they've restocked the provisions in the refuge chamber?" Getting no answer, the question started making the rounds. In case a rescue should take longer than a day, it was necessary to think about what was available for the trapped men to eat and drink.
The young man responsible for the job crossed himself and gave a prayer of thanks. He could scarcely believe his intuition. That very morning, after several weeks of seeing the empty emergency cache at the bottom of the shaft, he had finally restocked the water and brought down cans of tuna and crackers. There was food below to last at least seventy- two hours. Gracias, Dios, he thought, crediting his Maker with the foresight.
On the pampa the hours slogged by, the people's anxiety mounting all the while, and no one had yet heard from the owners of the mine. They were not where they ought to be: here, at the scene of the tragedy. "They have to take charge of the rescue," people were saying. But their absence during the six long hours that had elapsed only served to heighten the confusion and uncertainty that were taking hold of everyone.
The new arrivals sat down on the rocks. Others wandered about the footpaths lightly worn into the hard ground. Most of the family members had never been to the mine, because their breadwinners didn't want to bring them to such an inhospitable place.
But now they could finally see for themselves what it was like to work here in the middle of the driest desert on earth, surrounded only by dunes and barrenness. Now they understood the daily sacrifice these men made to provide for their loved ones—these men from whom, even now at sunset, no one had yet heard a peep.
A PLEA TO GOD
It was late, and the bus arrived, as it did every day, to carry the workers back to Copiapó. This time, no one but Ximena got on. She sat down and spoke with the driver, her words tumbling out in little bursts from nervousness and the bumps in the road. He listened impassively, nodding yes and looking out his window, avoiding the reality.
"It's terrible, just terrible, what's happening," Ximena said. She hated to leave without knowing, but she was confident that tomorrow it would all be sorted out and she would again see the miners back on the surface. This was her prayer to God as the bus ate up mile after mile of dusty road.
Two hours later, back at her house and desperate for news, she opened the door and immediately flicked on the television. The place where she worked was on every channel. Some commentators, better informed now, were calling it the worst mining disaster in Chilean history. Shaken, Ximena turned off the TV. She didn't want to see, but she had a feeling the truth was much worse than they imagined.
"IT'S TOO MANY"
Now it was night—an awful night. News of the collapse continued to spread like wildfire. President Sebastián Piñera, only five months in office, got a call from Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter. President Piñera had just arrived in Ecuador, the first stop on a tour that was to culminate in his attendance at the inauguration ceremony of President Juan Manuel Santos in Colombia. According to witnesses at the scene, Piñera pressed his hand against the telephone, speechless for a moment, and buried his fingers under the collar of his white shirt in a nervous mannerism he hadn't displayed in months.
The number of those trapped—thirty-three—concerned him. "It's too many," the president said to Hinzpeter. Immediately, he instructed the minister of mining, Laurence Golborne, who had come with him to sign trade agreements with the Ecuadorian government, to streamline the signing process for tomorrow morning, return to Chile, and go to the site of the collapse.
Golborne had gotten word at the same time, in a text message from his undersecretary, Pablo Wagner. He ordered Wagner to get to the mine at once and send him a detailed report, as soon as possible, on the condition of the buried miners.
Then Golborne took a flight from Quito, Ecuador, via Lima, Peru, to Santiago. Once in the Chilean capital, he headed straight to Group 10 of the Chilean Air Force, a military installation located next to the Pudahuel International Airport, and took off in a plane for Copiapó. He arrived at three in the morning. An hour later, the minister was at the mine.
As dawn broke, Minister of Labor Camila Merino was coordinating the operations. She had broad experience in the mining sector, having worked for twelve years as a manager of the Soquimich corporation (Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile). All her efforts were focused on the ventilation shaft in the hill—a passageway that, if it was clear, would permit the slow evacuation of the trapped men. Early that morning, Merino issued the first statement by the government.
"There are two entrances to the mine," she said. "The ramp, which is eight meters wide and through which trucks can travel, is not a possibility, because it is totally collapsed. The solution is the ventilation shaft. This duct is clear, but we have to work carefully because if we cause another collapse, we put at risk not only the rescuers but also the possibility of getting the people out quickly. If the ventilation shaft collapses, we have problems."
The operation moved stealthily. The rescuers could not afford any errors born of haste, since the least mistake could trigger a major cave-in. No one knew yet whether the ventilation shaft was still functioning or whether it would even work as an exit route.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Buried Alive by Manuel Pino Toro. Copyright © 2011 C. A. Press (Penguin Group). Excerpted by permission of Palgrave Macmillan.
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