All thirty-three of the Chilean miners were successfully rescued last Wednesday from more than 2,000 feet below the earth’s surface, after the San Jose mine had collapsed almost two months prior. And for the first 17 days— of the total 69 days the miners were confined — few suspected they were even alive.
The rescue mission last week was executed with extreme caution; miners were monitored by cameras installed in capsules to watch for any signs of panic or anxiety. They were each equipped with tinted eyewear, warm jacket and oxygen masks in hopes to make smoother the transition from the subterranean setting to Earth’s vastly colder and drier outer surface.
According to The Christian Science Monitor, the rescue’s flawless execution can be attributed to the supportive 5 key factors: the families surrounding the sight, the level-headed miners, the advanced machinery, the proactive government, and the lack of expenses spared. Families spent their time of vigil directly outside the mine, and companies clothed them, local fishermen fed them, and phone companies provided them with no-cost minutes with their loved ones trapped beneath the earth’s surface.
What speeded the process most was perhaps the Chilean government’s decision to make reaching the miners a competition between drilling companies. A mission that was intended to be carried out during a total 36 hours was instead completed in fewer than 24 due to the ascending capsules’ lack of shake and tear.
The last of the miners to make his 2,000 ft. ascent was Luis Alberto Urzua, the shift foreman credited with aiding the trapped miners endure a total 17 days in isolation before officials discovered that the workers had even survived the mine collapse. He will be honored with the record for longest time endured underground by a human being. Aside from his incredible survival, Urzua will be noted for his life-saving call to leadership beneath the collapsed mine, which included meticulously rationed food and strictly enforced work schedules and tasks carried out beneath the rubble.
Noted author and Stanford professor has become fascinated with the competence and “compassionate leadership of Luis Urzua,” a CNN report stated. Understanding, along with control over the resulting situation at hand can be attributed to the miners’ safe return, and these key traits are evidenced in Urzua’s call to order and enforcement of structure throughout their time trapped underground.
Urzua spoke in depth of his experiences from his own hospital bed at the San Jose mine on Wednesday. “You just have to speak the truth and believe in democracy,” he said. Urzua is said to have made most decisions underground according to a majority vote amongst the trapped miners. Fears of death and feelings of hopelessness crowded the already stuffy mining shaft, and with the coupled and unspoken fears of cannibalism, the miners were not saved simply with a call to order through democracy. They were saved by Luis Urzua’s acute and specific style of leadership.
The 33 miners agreed on the importance of a food rationing for the first 17 days without contact to the outside world. Half a spoonful of tuna or salmon was all to be consumed by each miner once every 24 hours. The water that the men were forced to drink was polluted from the surrounding machinery and carried a bad taste with every rationed sip.
Fights eventually broke out between the physically and emotionally drained workers and division plagued the 33’s proclaimed “unity throughout”. And despite the pact made between the miners that “what happens in the mine, stays in the mine,” stories of mutiny underground leaked to the public. Physical confrontations arose and divided the miners into three groups, each armed with fists and bottled up feelings of resentment. Until the probe reached the miners, workers had little to remain civil for, it seemed.
For two months these men only had a distant memory of their friends and family to cling to. They wrote poems and spoke through gritted teeth about the frustration and fear that grew within each miner every night they were not rescued.
Urzua encouraged them to keep working. He separated them into specific groups to utilize each individual’s skill beneath the collapsed mining shaft. And even in the absence of a direct result of their physical labor, and a true break between activities on the clock and off, the strict enforcement of regimented labor kept the workers purposeful.
Urzua referred to their stint underground as their “70-day shift”, and this particular mentality is what kept these men alive.
Haley Pearson is a freshman industrial design major and a columnist for the Daily 49er.
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