COPIAPO, Chile — Trapped nearly half a mile inside the earth and facing perhaps four months before rescue, 33 Chilean miners began accepting food, water and oxygen from above ground Monday as rescue teams worked to gauge their state of mind and brace them for the long wait ahead.
Through a newly installed communications system, each of the men spoke and reported feeling hungry but well, except for one with a stomach problem, a Chilean official said. They requested toothbrushes.
It was a positive sign, and Chile’s president said the nation was “crying with excitement and joy” after engineers broke through Sunday to the men’s refuge.
It had been 17 days since a landslide at the gold and copper mine caused a tunnel to collapse, entombing them more than 2,200 feet underground.
Still, doctors and psychological experts were trying to safeguard the sanity of the miners in the months to come and said they were implementing a plan that included keeping them informed and busy. The miners reported that a shift foreman named Luis Urzua had assumed leadership of the trapped men.
“They need to understand what we know up here at the surface, that it will take many weeks for them to reach the light,” said Health Minister Jaime Manalich.
The hard-won passage
Engineers worked to reinforce the 6-inch-wide bore hole that broke through to the refuge, using a long hose to coat its walls with a metallic gel to decrease the risk of rock falling and blocking the hard-won passage through the unstable mine.
The lubricant makes it easier to pass supplies through in capsules nicknamed “palomas,” Spanish for doves. The first of the packages, which are about 5 feet long and take about an hour to descend from the surface, held rehydration tablets and a high-energy glucose gel to help the miners begin to recover their digestive systems.
Rescue teams also sent oxygen down after the miners suggested there was not enough air in the stretches of the mine that run below where the main shaft collapsed.
The shelter, a living-room-sized chamber off one of the mine’s lower passages that is big enough for all 33 men, is far enough from the landslide to remain intact, and the men can also walk around where the rocks fell. Actual food will be sent down in several days, after the men’s stomachs have had time to adjust, said Paola Neuman of the medical rescue service.
The miners’ survival after 17 days is very unusual, but because they have made it this far, they should emerge physically fine, said Davitt McAteer, who was assistant secretary for mine safety and health at the U.S. Labor Department under President Bill Clinton.
“The health risks in a copper and gold mine are pretty small if you have air, food and water,” McAteer said.
Questionnaires sent down
Rescuers also sent down questionnaires to determine each man’s condition and to help identify their natural leader — someone who can make sure the men are keeping busy and mentally focused.
Above ground, rescuers and family members thought the leader might be Mario Gomez, who at 63 is perhaps the oldest of the veteran miners trapped.
Gomez had written his wife, Liliana, a letter that the miners tied to the drill bit. The letter was filled with expressions of faith and determination.
“Even if we have to wait months to communicate . . . I want to tell everyone that I’m good and we’ll surely come out OK,” Gomez wrote, scrawling the words on a sheet of notebook paper. “Patience and faith. God is great and the help of my God is going to make it possible to leave this mine alive.”
