After 10 weeks deep inside a collapsed mine, 33 Chilean miners were lifted to safety this week, emerging one by one in surprisingly good health and spirits from an unprecedented ordeal. Rising nearly half a mile from underground in a specially designed rescue capsule, Florencio Avalos became the first miner to taste freedom when he appeared through a manhole-size opening and stepped from the narrow rescue capsule into the arms of his father. “My boy is finally safe,” said Alfonso Avalos amid the cheers of family members, journalists, and Chilean President Sebastián Piñera.
“Operation San Lorenzo”—named for the patron saint of miners—began early Wednesday morning and was
expected to last up to two days, ending after The Week went to press. The Chilean government spared no expense to free the men, who’d been trapped in the gold and copper mine since Aug. 5, enlisting cutting-edge technologies and engineers from a dozen countries, including the U.S. “We just kept going, trusting in God that this would all work out,” said Juan Sanchez, the father of a miner.
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Thanks to an “extraordinary international effort,” these miners are the longest-surviving victims of a cave-in, said the Los Angeles Times in an editorial. The rescue brought 20 mining companies and the latest technologies to “Camp Hope.” Their efforts were “matched by the inspiring example” of the miners, who survived their first, desperate weeks by carefully dividing and sharing a two-day food supply.
The Chilean government staked its reputation on the rescue, said The Economist, and it has paid off. President Piñera, the country’s first conservative leader in 20 years, has enjoyed an enormous boost in popularity thanks to his “no-expenses-spared approach.” And Chile, previously known for natural disasters and human-rights violations, is suddenly viewed as gritty and resilient—“a country that ‘does things well.’”
Everyone loves a happy ending, but we shouldn’t forget that “other miners are today going to work in mines” that are similarly unsafe, said Claudia Ricci in HuffingtonPost.com. If “even a fraction of the time, care, and effort” that’s gone into this extraordinary rescue had been invested in safety precautions, would this accident have happened in the first place?
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