Chilean Miners: 17 Days Buried Alive

This programme contains some strong language.

On August 5th, 2010, a massive explosion rocked this landscape

and 33 miners were trapped half a mile below.

For 17 days, the miners had no contact with the world outside.

Until now, there has been a pact not to speak about what happened

when the mountain collapsed and forced them to confront their worst nightmares.

As the miners began the hour-long drive underground

that August morning, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

The copper mine at San Jose was notorious.

It paid higher wages to compensate for a bad safety record.

For Mario Sepulveda, a Jehovah's Witness,

that extra money supported his mission to drag his family out of poverty.

Samuel Avalos was new to mining after a life on the streets selling CDs.

Mining provided him with his first regular wage.

For Victor Zamora, the state of the mine was a constant concern.

His job was to shore up weak sections of the tunnel.

Now, six of the miners recall the untold story of those first 17 days.

And fellow miners help reconstruct what took place underground.

CRASHING

MEN SHOUT

CRASHING

MEN SHOUT

No-one was even sure how many men were down the mine.

Victor Zamora just remembers working his way up the main tunnel through the chaos.

RUMBLING

SIRENS

Over 2,000 feet above the trapped miners, the first rescuers were arriving.

With no proper maps of the mine, they had to improvise

as they tried to work out where any survivors might be located.

With the mountain still unstable,

the first rescuers drove down the main tunnel, taking a camera

to see if there was still a way through to any survivors.

Back at the mine entrance, a manager read a roll-call of the names of the missing, feared dead.

Far below, the miners found their way to the emergency bunker.

There they were able to establish for the first time who had been trapped.

Mario Sepulveda prayed for inspiration.

Sepulveda led a team to inspect the escape shafts.

Carlos Barrios remembers what they discovered.

The shafts had not been properly maintained and sections of the escape ladders were missing.

The men were expecting to find at least two days' supply of food,

as required by mine regulations.

Management had, once again, failed to prepare for an emergency.

-Zamora?

-O!

-Como esta alla?

-Vamos a ver aqui!

The 33 men had to accept that there would be no way out that night.

As the men tried to sleep, the rescuers were discovering the extent of the damage.

Eight separate levels of the mine had collapsed on top of each other -

a rock fall the size of the Empire State Building.

Wives and relatives from the nearby town of Copiapo had begun to arrive,

including Lily Gomez, wife of the oldest miner.

Rescuers were now exploring the same escape shafts the trapped men had tried to climb.

INAUDIBLE

THEY SHOUT

The miners used drills and car horns in an attempt to be heard above.

And they lit fires in the hope that the smoke would travel up the escape shafts.

Anything to signal they were still alive.

SHOUTING

The temperature in the mine was over 40 degrees,

but the men could drink from the large supply of industrial water

stored to cool the drilling equipment.

They also removed batteries and headlamps from the vehicles to rig up makeshift lights.

On the third day, there was a further collapse, which made rescue via the main tunnel impossible.

The Minister for Mining reported to the families.

The news was too much for Lily Gomez.

# Ave...

# Ave Dominus

# Dominus tecum

# Benedicta tu in mulieribus

# Et benedictus... #

The daily prayers were followed by a general meeting,

at which decisions were taken by voting, establishing a democracy from the beginning.

The miners had established daily routines, but still had no idea if anyone was even looking for them.

For four days they had heard nothing from the surface.

By day five, Lily Gomez had brought most of her family up the mine

and, along with other relatives, set up camp.

Their protest was a magnet for national TV news.

It ensured the authorities could not abandon the missing men.

Their campaign succeeded.

Soon drills began to appear from all over Chile.

Five days and still no sign of a rescue attempt.

Some of the men began to lose hope.

THEY CHANT

THEY LAUGH

The rescuers still had no accurate map of the mine.

Nevertheless, by the end of the first week,

a whole series of drills started pounded the desert floor,

all aiming for a tunnel half a mile below.

The miners knew that the probes would take days, maybe weeks, to hammer through the rock.

Each of them found his own way of killing time.

POP SONG PLAYS

One teaspoon of food every two days was beginning to divide the strong from the weak.

The heat and humidity only made the situation worse.

HORNS BLARE

The two-week anniversary of the accident was marked

with the sounding of horns at what had become known as Camp Hope.

The families were told by the authorities

that one of the probes might reach the emergency bunker that night.

Down below, the miners were equally convinced they were about to be found.

DRILLING NOISE

The rescuers sent a camera down the borehole to see where the probe had ended up.

They saw nothing but rock and rubble,

not realising they were just feet from the missing men.

The families began to lose faith in the experts.

The starving miners were now facing the final taboo.

WOMEN SING

DRILLING

CHEERING

THEY CHANT

So, on day 17, the rescuers' camera found not rubble

but the first images of the missing men.

They would have to wait another 52 days before they could be brought to the surface.

Meanwhile, the international media had descended on San Jose.

The emergence of the first miners, like Mario Sepulveda, transformed a disaster into a miracle.

-MAN LAUGHS

-Mario! Mario!

Vale, vale, vale! Vale, gracias!

Over the next 24 hours, the world watched as the men emerged from the capsule one by one.

APPLAUSE

As each miner stepped into the light, they found themselves engulfed by worldwide fame.

CROWD CHANTS

Yet privately they're still haunted by the memory of what they lived through.

No-one has been held responsible for the accident,

though the owners and the government are being taken to court by the 33 miners.

Today, the mine at San Jose is abandoned and permanently closed.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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