Drill Reaches Chamber Where 33 Miners Are Trapped

A powerful drill broke through on Saturday to 33 miners who have been trapped nearly half a mile underground for more than two months, completing a hole for them to be hauled to the surface. But the actual rescue is still expected to be days away and Chileans have been warned that the operation was entering its most dangerous stage. The bells were still ringing an hour later as mining officials started considering their next step: to what scale, if at all, should the rocky walls along the rescue route be reinforced.

They had said that a decision would be made later Saturday. This rescue won’t be over until the last person below leaves this mine.” Mining Minister Laurence Golborne said. “We have done everything that technology permits,” said Miguel Fortt, a consultant on underground mining rescues in the Atacama region, had said before the breakthrough. “If the Lord doesn’t send us an earthquake, we’ll be O.K.” But whatever the approach, it is going to be a very tight fit. The rescue hole is only a little more than two feet wide and it is not even straight, which could create potential snags as the capsule shimmies up, carrying one man at a time. “There’s only about two inches clearance around it,” John E. Urosek, chief of mine emergency operations for the United States Mine Safety and Health Administration had said earlier. “And they’ll have to pull it out of that depth so many times, it could get wedged.”


Medical officials continue to prepare the miners for their moment in the sun. They have been keeping their weight under control so they can fit in the capsule, which is about 21 inches wide and built with suggestions from the NASA team. Engineers are expected to send down a camera to evaluate the hole and begin the procedure of prepping the rescue and capsule teams. But before any of the miners come up, at least two rescuers will be sent down first, to stay in the mine and assist with the capsule. “We are reaching the final part, but it feels like the first day,” Mrs. Cortez said. “We didn’t know if they were dead or alive, when we didn’t know anything and, just like now, we were filled with anxiety, sadness.”