Camp Hope families wait in Chile's Atacama Desert for trapped miners
By Philip Sherwell at Camp Hope in the Atacama desert
Relatives of the 33 miners that are trapped inside the SAn Jose mine Photo: LORENZO MOSCIA
The roaring fires fend off the bitter winter cold that each dusk envelops Camp Hope, a tent community spread across the sands above the gold and copper lodes of the Atacama desert of northern Chile.
As the driest place on the planet, inhospitable and remote, it is not an obvious location for an encampment under canvas.
But this wilderness is also now the scene of an epic tale of survival and a remarkable operation to keep alive 33 men trapped in the bowels of the earth. And around those campfires, their families are sharing stories of endurance, resilience and relief.
Fears for the worst turned to tears of joy when contact was established last Sunday via a narrow borehole with the lost men of the San Jose mine as they huddled in an emergency shelter nearly half a mile underground - 17 agonising days after they were cut off from the world by a rockfall on Aug 5.
Relatives could be at Camp Hope, as they christened the site, until Christmas, when rescuers hope to get the miners out.
Across a ridge where 33 flags - 32 Chilean and one Bolivian - flutter in the wind, one for each of the trapped men, the drilling operation to rescue them was due to begin today.
The goal is to bore a shaft 26 inches in diameter - the size of a bicycle tyre - and 2,300 feet deep so that the men can be painstakingly lifted to freedom by a harness. Industry experts estimate that it could take three to four months to cut through the rock.
Deep underground, the miners and mechanics are preparing to survive an ordeal longer that survived by any human - already they have been trapped in the subterreanean warren longer than any other survivors of similar disasters.
They are connected to the outside world by two narrow holes, each barely nine inches in diameter. A third is being drilled.
These umbilical cords are being used to supply them with everything from basic supplies of water, food and medicines to telephone lines, mini-video projectors and games - plus of course a two-way traffic in letters between the men and their family and friends.
They rely on what miners call "doves", long thin cargo capsules which were being lowered into the ground by winch for the 25 minute descent last week, from the windswept desert plateau between the Andes and the Pacific.
Judging from the grainy video sent back to the surface most have adjusted to this existence with fortitude and humour, even setting up a "casino" where they play with hand-made dominoes. In the video they described life underground, signing off with a rousing rendition of the national anthem.
But not all of them were in it.
"Five of the miners are isolated, are not eating well and do not want to appear on camera," said Jaime Manalich, the health minister, who said the five showed signs of depression.
At the surface, an hour's drive through a landscape of towering sand-dunes and dry river-beds from the nearest town of Copiapo, remarkable stories abound - perhaps none more so than the experience of Raul Bustos, 40, a hydraulic machinery mechanic.
He has endured what is, by any standards, a year of calamities. First, he and his family survived the February earthquake that devastated his home town in southern Chile - only for the subsequent tsunami to deprive him of his livelihood when it battered the shipbuilding firm where he worked.
So he left his parents, wife and children behind and headed north to the lunar landscape of Atacama in search of employment in the mines. That work should not normally have taken him underground - but on the fateful day, a mechanical fault required his technical skills.
"Unlucky? Not at all. Raul is the luckiest man alive to have survived both these disasters," his mother Rosa told The Sunday Telegraph at Camp Hope, pulling from her shirt the two images that she carries next to her heart - a picture of her son and an image of Jesus.
His wife Carola Narvaez - women in Latin America do not normally take their husband's surnames - was just as positive.
"In the earthquake we just had to keep on living, we had our lives," she said. "This is the same. It is producing much anguish, isolation, fear. But we're alive. My husband is alive down in that mine and we will have another happy ending."
The letters now transported daily up and down by the "doves" describe the miners' surreal existence. Mr Bustos sleeps in the seat of pick-up truck which had ferried some of the team down through the 4.3 mile corkscrew network of large tunnels, and he is deploying his sporting prowess as a footballer and ping-pong champion to keep the men fit.
And his is by no means the only personal drama playing out above and below the desert at Camp Hope where two miners' wives are suddenly going through their pregnancies alone.
Ariel Ticona left his house before dawn on Aug 5 for his shift at the San Jose mine. Just after 7am, as he prepared to entry the shaft, he phoned his wife, Elizabeth Segovia - who was almost eight months pregnant - to tell her it was time to wake up and take their six-year-old son to school.
"After four or five days the children started to ask what time their daddy would come home," she recalled. "Until three days ago, the oldest still cried at night. The youngest, who is three, said that he was going to go up there to dig through the rocks so he could get to his dad."
Mr Ticona will miss the birth of his third child. But his wife is determined he will catch up on the experience. "We want to film the birth so that Ariel can see afterwards," she said.
Unless the rescue operation goes badly wrong, his fellow miner Victor Zamora should be back at the surface to see his wife Jessica, who is nine weeks pregnant, give birth to their second child. But she still plans to sends him the image of the embryo's first scan when it is taken next month.
Esteban Rojas has promised his wife Jessica a church wedding, 25 years after they were married in a low-key civil ceremony. "When I get out, we'll buy a wedding dress and get married in the Church," he wrote in one letter.
She has told friends that she will be setting up a gift registry soon. "As you know, I need a stove and refrigerator," she joked.
The story looked as though it was going to have a very different conclusion for the first two weeks after the cave-in. Rescuers knew that if the men survived the initial collapse, they would have sought refuge in the emergency shelter at 2,300 ft and started drilling relief holes in an attempt to make contact.
But they were equipped with out-of-date and inaccurate mine maps and several holes drifted off-target, said Alejandro Olave, a supervisor working on the operation with Comprobe, a company that measures underground deviations in drilling.
With time passing, prospects were fading fast. In mining rescues across the world, it is rare for a happy ending after more than 10 days.
“We never lost hope that we’d find the men but he drawings had not been updated so it was really a miracle when we broke through in the right place,” said Mr Olave, who was working with the team that made the successful breakthrough.
And on Aug 22, a scrawled note emerged from the depths that caused jubilation across Chile and made headlines around the world. It read simply: "All 33 of us are fine in the shelter."
What is so striking is how the women at the surface and the men beneath it are dealing with this crisis with spirit and determination. Even before last weekend’s “miracle at the mine”, the trapped workers were deploying their skills and ingenuity to stay alive.
They eked out two days emergency rations of peaches and tuna for more than two weeks, collected the water which runs down the rock face for drinking, and charged their helmet batteries from vehicles in the mine for light. Plenty of air reaches them through natural crevices and man-made shafts.
"You are not dealing with normal people here," said Commander Andreas Llarena, a navy physician deployed to the scene because of his specialism in submarine and diving medicine.
"They are not a bunch of tourists trapped in a cave. They are miners used to working underground, they know how the earth operates, this environment is not a mystery to them. They are trapped in the equivalent of their office. That's not a good situation, but it is a huge advantage."
Rescue chiefs are turning not just to the deep seas but to outer space for know-how. The US space agency NASA is sending experts in human confinement to Copiapo this week to share their know-how in a field where understanding is still limited.
Disaster relief psychiatrists and medics are also putting together plans to use lights to mimic light and day and personalised exercise routines and diets in an effort to minimise damage to natural body rhythms, mental health, physical condition and eyesight - all at risk from the prolonged underground imprisonment.
It was decided soon after they were located that it could take until Christmas to rescue them. so that they had realistic expectations of how long their ordeal might last - the news was broken to them on Wednesday by the health minister.
Several of the miners must lose enough weight to fit into the harnesses that will inch them to safety when the shaft is completed. Nobody with a waist measurement of more than 34 inches will make it through the escape shaft.
Back above ground at Camp Hope, most relatives are still simply delighted that the men are alive and well.
Next to an image of the Virgin Mary, a note to one of the men assures him that on his escape he will be "bigger than Elvis" - a reference to his musical hero. The miners below ground have responded in similar style.
As one noted in a letter to his father: "Tell Mum I'm fine and coming back soon. This shift is a bit longer than normal. " The humour is reassuring psychiatrists. But they know there will be tough times ahead.
"We are in uncharted territory here," acknowledged Dr Rodrigo Figueroa, an emergency mental health specialist. "Nobody has ever had to go through what these men are experiencing."
Fears for the worst turned to tears of joy when contact was established last Sunday via a narrow borehole with the lost men of the San Jose mine as they huddled in an emergency shelter nearly half a mile underground - 17 agonising days after they were cut off from the world by a rockfall on Aug 5.
Relatives could be at Camp Hope, as they christened the site, until Christmas, when rescuers hope to get the miners out.
Across a ridge where 33 flags - 32 Chilean and one Bolivian - flutter in the wind, one for each of the trapped men, the drilling operation to rescue them was due to begin today.
The goal is to bore a shaft 26 inches in diameter - the size of a bicycle tyre - and 2,300 feet deep so that the men can be painstakingly lifted to freedom by a harness. Industry experts estimate that it could take three to four months to cut through the rock.
Deep underground, the miners and mechanics are preparing to survive an ordeal longer that survived by any human - already they have been trapped in the subterreanean warren longer than any other survivors of similar disasters.
They are connected to the outside world by two narrow holes, each barely nine inches in diameter. A third is being drilled.
These umbilical cords are being used to supply them with everything from basic supplies of water, food and medicines to telephone lines, mini-video projectors and games - plus of course a two-way traffic in letters between the men and their family and friends.
They rely on what miners call "doves", long thin cargo capsules which were being lowered into the ground by winch for the 25 minute descent last week, from the windswept desert plateau between the Andes and the Pacific.
Judging from the grainy video sent back to the surface most have adjusted to this existence with fortitude and humour, even setting up a "casino" where they play with hand-made dominoes. In the video they described life underground, signing off with a rousing rendition of the national anthem.
But not all of them were in it.
"Five of the miners are isolated, are not eating well and do not want to appear on camera," said Jaime Manalich, the health minister, who said the five showed signs of depression.
At the surface, an hour's drive through a landscape of towering sand-dunes and dry river-beds from the nearest town of Copiapo, remarkable stories abound - perhaps none more so than the experience of Raul Bustos, 40, a hydraulic machinery mechanic.
He has endured what is, by any standards, a year of calamities. First, he and his family survived the February earthquake that devastated his home town in southern Chile - only for the subsequent tsunami to deprive him of his livelihood when it battered the shipbuilding firm where he worked.
So he left his parents, wife and children behind and headed north to the lunar landscape of Atacama in search of employment in the mines. That work should not normally have taken him underground - but on the fateful day, a mechanical fault required his technical skills.
"Unlucky? Not at all. Raul is the luckiest man alive to have survived both these disasters," his mother Rosa told The Sunday Telegraph at Camp Hope, pulling from her shirt the two images that she carries next to her heart - a picture of her son and an image of Jesus.
His wife Carola Narvaez - women in Latin America do not normally take their husband's surnames - was just as positive.
"In the earthquake we just had to keep on living, we had our lives," she said. "This is the same. It is producing much anguish, isolation, fear. But we're alive. My husband is alive down in that mine and we will have another happy ending."
The letters now transported daily up and down by the "doves" describe the miners' surreal existence. Mr Bustos sleeps in the seat of pick-up truck which had ferried some of the team down through the 4.3 mile corkscrew network of large tunnels, and he is deploying his sporting prowess as a footballer and ping-pong champion to keep the men fit.
And his is by no means the only personal drama playing out above and below the desert at Camp Hope where two miners' wives are suddenly going through their pregnancies alone.
Ariel Ticona left his house before dawn on Aug 5 for his shift at the San Jose mine. Just after 7am, as he prepared to entry the shaft, he phoned his wife, Elizabeth Segovia - who was almost eight months pregnant - to tell her it was time to wake up and take their six-year-old son to school.
"After four or five days the children started to ask what time their daddy would come home," she recalled. "Until three days ago, the oldest still cried at night. The youngest, who is three, said that he was going to go up there to dig through the rocks so he could get to his dad."
Mr Ticona will miss the birth of his third child. But his wife is determined he will catch up on the experience. "We want to film the birth so that Ariel can see afterwards," she said.
Unless the rescue operation goes badly wrong, his fellow miner Victor Zamora should be back at the surface to see his wife Jessica, who is nine weeks pregnant, give birth to their second child. But she still plans to sends him the image of the embryo's first scan when it is taken next month.
Esteban Rojas has promised his wife Jessica a church wedding, 25 years after they were married in a low-key civil ceremony. "When I get out, we'll buy a wedding dress and get married in the Church," he wrote in one letter.
She has told friends that she will be setting up a gift registry soon. "As you know, I need a stove and refrigerator," she joked.
The story looked as though it was going to have a very different conclusion for the first two weeks after the cave-in. Rescuers knew that if the men survived the initial collapse, they would have sought refuge in the emergency shelter at 2,300 ft and started drilling relief holes in an attempt to make contact.
But they were equipped with out-of-date and inaccurate mine maps and several holes drifted off-target, said Alejandro Olave, a supervisor working on the operation with Comprobe, a company that measures underground deviations in drilling.
With time passing, prospects were fading fast. In mining rescues across the world, it is rare for a happy ending after more than 10 days.
“We never lost hope that we’d find the men but he drawings had not been updated so it was really a miracle when we broke through in the right place,” said Mr Olave, who was working with the team that made the successful breakthrough.
And on Aug 22, a scrawled note emerged from the depths that caused jubilation across Chile and made headlines around the world. It read simply: "All 33 of us are fine in the shelter."
What is so striking is how the women at the surface and the men beneath it are dealing with this crisis with spirit and determination. Even before last weekend’s “miracle at the mine”, the trapped workers were deploying their skills and ingenuity to stay alive.
They eked out two days emergency rations of peaches and tuna for more than two weeks, collected the water which runs down the rock face for drinking, and charged their helmet batteries from vehicles in the mine for light. Plenty of air reaches them through natural crevices and man-made shafts.
"You are not dealing with normal people here," said Commander Andreas Llarena, a navy physician deployed to the scene because of his specialism in submarine and diving medicine.
"They are not a bunch of tourists trapped in a cave. They are miners used to working underground, they know how the earth operates, this environment is not a mystery to them. They are trapped in the equivalent of their office. That's not a good situation, but it is a huge advantage."
Rescue chiefs are turning not just to the deep seas but to outer space for know-how. The US space agency NASA is sending experts in human confinement to Copiapo this week to share their know-how in a field where understanding is still limited.
Disaster relief psychiatrists and medics are also putting together plans to use lights to mimic light and day and personalised exercise routines and diets in an effort to minimise damage to natural body rhythms, mental health, physical condition and eyesight - all at risk from the prolonged underground imprisonment.
It was decided soon after they were located that it could take until Christmas to rescue them. so that they had realistic expectations of how long their ordeal might last - the news was broken to them on Wednesday by the health minister.
Several of the miners must lose enough weight to fit into the harnesses that will inch them to safety when the shaft is completed. Nobody with a waist measurement of more than 34 inches will make it through the escape shaft.
Back above ground at Camp Hope, most relatives are still simply delighted that the men are alive and well.
Next to an image of the Virgin Mary, a note to one of the men assures him that on his escape he will be "bigger than Elvis" - a reference to his musical hero. The miners below ground have responded in similar style.
As one noted in a letter to his father: "Tell Mum I'm fine and coming back soon. This shift is a bit longer than normal. " The humour is reassuring psychiatrists. But they know there will be tough times ahead.
"We are in uncharted territory here," acknowledged Dr Rodrigo Figueroa, an emergency mental health specialist. "Nobody has ever had to go through what these men are experiencing."
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