SAN JOSE MINE, Chile—With the whole world watching, miners trapped deep underground for 69 days began rising to the surface in a red, white and blue rescue capsule dubbed "The Phoenix."
Florencio Ávalos, a 31-year old father of two, was the first of 33 miners to be rescued after having endured longer underground than any mine accident survivors to date.
Mr. Ávalos emerged above ground just after midnight on Wednesday Chile time as rescuers cheered. He was greeted by family members and government officials as he made his way into a triage area where he would undergo an initial check-up.
Mario Sepulveda, the chatty "presenter" who acted as host for video recordings the miners had made underground, was the second miner brought to the surface.
After emerging from the capsule, Mr. Sepulveda, gave a bear hug to all of the dignitaries present, including President Sebastián Piñera and the First Lady. Mr. Sepulveda grabbed stones collected from the mine's belly and handed them out with a big smile to a laughing Mr. Piñera and Mining Minister Laurence Golborne.
Third out of the pod was Juan Illanes, who hugged President Piñera.
The rescue operation was set to continue through the day Wednesday. Before Mr. Ávalos' emergence, a rescuer worker, Manuel Gonzalez, had ridden down into the bottom of the mine. Spectral images from a camera showed him embracing the miners. It was the first direct contact they had had with another person since the Aug. 5 cave-in. Mr. Piñera told Mr. Gonzalez before his departure, "may God be with you, the Chilean people are with you. Bring back the miners with you."
Earlier in the night, rescuers lowered the unmanned 14-foot capsule some 200 feet, while engineers made last-minute adjustments to systems to enable communication between the miners and the surface during their trips. On a second unmanned test run, rescuers descended the capsule the full length of the shaft.
The government had previously revealed the order in which the men will be extracted from the mine, where they have already endured longer than any previous mine accident survivors. The first men were chosen because they were thought to have the physical and mental attributes to work out any bugs that might emerge in the capsule.
At Camp Hope, the sprawling tent city the miners' relatives established after the Aug. 5 cave-in, family members anxiously counted the minutes for the rescue to begin its final phase.
"My heart is beating fast and it feels like it's about to explode," said Priscilla Ávalos, who has been traveling to the mine every weekend to be closer to her brothers Renan and Florencio Ávalos.
Fabiola Acuna, wife of miner Claudio Acuna, was digesting the news that her husband had drawn No. 26 in the miner extraction lottery. "The wait will even be longer," she sighed. Health Minister Jaime Mañalich said that several miners had offered to be the last man out of the mine, but that distinction would fall to the shift foreman, Luis Urzua, whose leadership skills have been widely praised.
Down below, the miners made final preparations of their own.
"The mountain began to creak in the morning, but in the afternoon it stopped creaking," miner Dario Segovia wrote in a letter his brother provided to the Santiago newspaper La Tercera Tuesday. "We prayed. All of us are uneasy about the size of the rocks."
The operation bears risks. After a drill finished boring a 28-inch-wide hole into the chamber where the miners are located early Saturday, engineers decided to install steel casing in only the top 315 feet of the 2,050-foot shaft. They are counting on the rest of the hole being smooth and sound enough to serve as a safe conduit for escape.
"If a fragment of rock was to wedge the capsule to the wall of the hole, the [miners] would have their work ahead of them to free the capsule," said Louis King, managing director of Australian Mine Rescue Consultants, which isn't involved in the rescue effort. "I don't think it is time to celebrate just yet."
A spirit of solidarity has bloomed in the Atacama Desert, the barren wasteland where the mine is located, since the cave-in. Volunteers from nearby towns came to cook and baby-sit for the families of miners who were camping above the mine. Local mining companies brought drills to San Jose and began sending probes deep into the earth to look for the chamber where the men were holed up—or find their corpses. A probe finally made contact after 17 days, when the miners were down to the last two cans of the tuna that had sustained them through the ordeal. "Life is hard here, there are earthquakes and accidents," said Macarena Valdes, a 30-year-old topographer who helped direct the positioning of the drills in the rescue effort "People have to work together."
After the miners were found, their cause ceased to be simply Chilean. Schoolchildren in St. Paul, Minn., and Fredricktown, Pa., sent letters of support to the miners' families. Pearl Jam front man Eddie Vedder celebrated them on his Twitter account: "Viva chile! 33 miners are alive!"
Town leaders and industrialists from Nice, France, shipped half a ton of protein bars to the mine, thinking the men might need nourishment. English soccer legend Bobby Charlton, himself the son of a miner, invited the miners on an all-expenses paid trip to see the Manchester United Football Club play. A website collected thousands of messages of support from throughout the Spanish speaking world.
"Miners are working-class heroes in the best of times, but in worst of times everyone can relate to taking a job where there are high risks but really no choice," said Harley Shaiken, a specialist on Latin America and labor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704164004575548243404925542.html?mod=mktw
1st Miner to reach surface: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RZYRDURa0o