SAN JOSE MINE, Chile — Florencio Avalos, the first of 33 miners to be rescued, surfaced Tuesday night with a grin after 69 days underground.
He stepped out of a rescue capsule amid sobs from his young son and received a bracing bear hug from Chilean President Sebastian Piñera.
Avalos, the 31-year-old second-in- command of the miners, smiled widely as he hugged rescuers, then Piñera, as his wife, two sons and father looked on. His 7-year-old son Bairo sobbed, as did Chile’s first lady, Cecilia Morel. Then Avalos was escorted into a medical triage center for the first of a battery of tests.
Earlier, the missile-like escape capsule had been lowered into a nearly half-mile tunnel in the Chilean desert to carry the miners to fresh air and freedom.
Steam rushed from the hole into the frigid night air — a sign of the humid, sauna-like conditions the men have endured in the gold and copper mine.
Piñera patted the side of the custom-built capsule proudly as the last act of the mine-collapse ordeal approached.
“We made a promise to never surrender, and we kept it,” Piñera said as he waited to greet the miners, whose endurance and unity captivated the world as Chile meticulously prepared their rescue.
A mine-rescue expert and a navy special forces paramedic were lowered to the men to prepare them for the trip. It was expected to take as many as 36 hours for all the miners to be rescued.
Families and reporters huddled around TVs and bonfires as the preliminary rescue order was announced. Avalos has been so shy that he volunteered to handle the camera rescuers sent down so he wouldn’t have to appear on the videos that the miners sent up.
The last miner out is also decided: Shift foreman Luis Urzua, whose leadership was credited for helping the men endure 17 days with no outside contact after the collapse. The men made 48 hours’ worth of rations last that entire time before rescuers could drill holes to them and send down more food.
Janette Marin, sister-in-law of miner Dario Segovia, said the order of rescue didn’t matter.
“What matters is that he is getting out, that they are all getting out.
“This won’t be a success unless they all get out,” she added, echoing the solidarity that the miners and people across Chile have expressed.
The paramedics could change the order of rescue based on a brief medical check once they were in the mine. First out were to be those best able to handle any difficulties and tell their comrades what to expect. Then, the weakest and the ill — in this case, about 10 suffer from hypertension, diabetes, dental and respiratory infections and skin lesions from the mine’s oppressive humidity. The last should be people who are both physically fit and strong of character.
Chile took extensive precautions to ensure the miners’ privacy, using a screen to block the top of the shaft from the more than 1,000 journalists at the scene.
The miners were ushered to a triage station for a medical check. They gathered with a few relatives in an area also closed to the media, before being taken by helicopter to a hospital.
Each ride up the shaft was expected to take about 20 minutes, and authorities expected they could haul up one miner per hour. When the last man surfaces, it promises to end a national crisis that began when 700,000 tons of rock collapsed Aug. 5, sealing the miners into the lower reaches of the mine.
Panic attacks were the rescuers’ biggest concern. The miners were not being sedated — they need to be alert in case something goes wrong. If a miner must get out more quickly, rescuers will accelerate the capsule to a maximum 3 meters per second, Health Minister Jaime Manalich said.
The rescue attempt is risky simply because no one else has ever tried to extract miners from such depths, said Davitt McAteer, who directed the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration in the Clinton administration. A miner could get claustrophobic and do something to damage the capsule. Or a falling rock could wedge it in the shaft. Or the cable could get hung up. Or the rig that pulls the cable could overheat.
“You can be good and you can be lucky. And they’ve been good and lucky,” McAteer told the AP. “Knock on wood that this luck holds out for the next 33 hours.”
The miners were to be closely monitored from the moment they’re strapped in the capsule. They were given a high-calorie liquid diet donated by NASA, designed to keep them from vomiting as the rescue capsule rotates 10 to 12 times through curves in the 28-inch-diameter escape hole.
A small video camera is in the escape capsule, trained on each miner’s face for panic attacks. The miners will wear oxygen masks and have two-way voice communication.
The miners will also wear sweaters because they’ll experience a shift in climate from about 90 degrees underground to near freezing on the surface after nightfall. Those coming out during daylight hours will wear sunglasses.
After initial medical checks and visits with family members selected by the miners, the men were to be flown to the hospital in Copiapo, a 10-minute ride away. Two floors have been prepared where the miners will receive physical and psychological exams and be kept under observation in a ward as dark as a movie theater.
Families were urged to wait and prepare to greet the miners at home after a 48-hour hospital stay. Manalich said no cameras or interviews will be allowed until the miners are released, unless the miners expressly desire it.
Chile has promised that its care of the miners won’t end for six months at least — not until they can be sure that each miner has readjusted.
U.S. President Barack Obama praised rescuers, who include many Americans, including Arvada driller Jeff Hart, who broke open the escape route Saturday.
“While that rescue is far from over and difficult work remains, we pray that by God’s grace, the miners will be able to emerge safely and return to their families soon,” Obama said.
