Bid to Free Trapped Chile Miners Starts Tuesday
Excitement grew Friday outside the mine where 33 men have been trapped for more than two months, as a drill carving an escape shaft pushed through the final section of rock above their underground chamber.
"Today could be a great day," tweeted Mining Minister Laurence Golborne, quoting a song by Joan Manuel Serrat.
Health Minister Jaime Manalich, speaking briefly as he arrived at the mine, raised expectations even more by repeating "Tuesday" back to reporters who asked if the men could be pulled out that day.
Complete Coverage: Chile Mine Collapse
CBS News Twitter Posts from Camp Hope
The miners' families kept vigil overnight, singing songs around a bonfire and doing early morning calisthenics to shake off anxiety and shivers in the bitter desert cold.
"Just a little bit left to go, a very little bit," said Cristina Nunez, whose husband, Claudio Yanez, is trapped below. Still, she wants rescuers to take no chances, waiting a few days more if necessary to pull them all out safely.
The "Plan B" drill is just yards away from winning a three-way race to reach the miners with a hole wide enough to accommodate their escape capsule. "Plan A" and "Plan C" had to slow down after repeatedly veering off course in recent days.
Just 40 meters remain before the drill breaks through to the miners at 2,047 feet below ground, CBS News' Fernando Suarez reports.
The T130 is aiming at a workshop that isn't as deep underground as the refuge where the miners happened to be eating when 700,000 tons of rock collapsed on Aug. 5 in the middle section of the gold and copper mine, which runs like a corkscrew for more than four miles (7 kilometers) below a rocky hill in Chile's vast northern Atacama desert.
Once the drilling is complete, a video camera will be lowered through the shaft to help determine whether the miners can be pulled up through the exposed rock, or must wait for the shaft to be encased with steel piping to reduce the remote risk of something going wrong. Golborne said the casing would take three to eight more days, and a decision could be made Saturday.
All the miners will be brought to the surface wearing special sunglasses because their pupils have been continually dilated in the low light for 64 days, and exposure to the sun may damage their eyes, reports CBS News correspondent Seth Doane.
President Sebastian Pinera sent his wife Cecilia Morel to meet with the miners' families Friday and announced that Bolivian President Evo Morales will join him for the rescue. One of the trapped miners is Bolivian.
The actual rescue is expected to take 48 hours as the miners are pulled out one by one, a made-for-TV spectacle that has drawn nearly 800 journalists to this isolated spot in the desert.
Chileans have rallied around this spare-no-expense rescue effort, and Pinera has surged in popularity for his close management of the crisis.
"What started as a tragedy should end as a great blessing, because this epic of the miners has illuminated the soul of our country and strengthened the Chileans' spirit," Pinera said in a speech in southern Chile.
He said his government "has acted as a government must in these kinds of situations. ... When we realized that day, Thursday, Aug. 5, that the San Esteban mining company wasn't capable of handling the rescue, we decided to take on complete responsibility. And just as I said on that first day, we would do everything humanly possible to pull them out alive."
Sen. Isabel Allende, joining her constituents around their bonfire Thursday night, said "the battle isn't over."
"Chile is a country that is able to confront its challenges, but on the other hand it is a country that still has a long way to go," said Allende, the daughter of Salvador Allende, the socialist president ousted by Gen. Augusto Pinochet in 1973. "We must keep working for safety in the mines."
Before the miners can begin their passage to the outside world, still more people will join them down below to make their journey as smooth as it can be.
These men - an elite group of three paramedics with the Chilean navy's special forces and 13 rescue experts with the state-owned mining company Codelco - will work in shifts during the 48 hours it could take to evaluate the men and strap them into the escape capsule for their 15-20 minute ride to the surface.
And the paramedics will be empowered to change a list, already prepared, that suggests the order of the miners' rescue.
The list is based on daily examinations of the miners' physical and mental health and strength of character during more than two months of captivity, Cmdr. Renato Navarro, the Chilean navy's submarine chief, told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The first one up should be someone capable of handling a frightening setback in the narrow shaft, and describing how the next ones up might avoid problems, Navarro said.
"The most able miners will leave first - those who can better describe to the next how they might avoid the potential problems that the capsule might encounter. Then those with illnesses or who suffer from one problem or another. And finally the last to surface are the strongest physically or in terms of their character."
Navarro would not reveal the list's suggested order, since it may change before the miners are pulled out if a miner suffers a health setback, and since the paramedics who descend into the mine will ultimately make their own judgment calls. "The paramedics will have the last word," he said.
Among the most physically fit of the miners is Edison Pena, an athlete who said he has been running 10 kilometers a day down below.
Next come those with chronic illnesses, like Jose Ojeda with diabetes and Jorge Galleguillos with hypertension, and those who are older, like Mario Gomez, the oldest at 63.
Last up will be those considered most capable of handling the anxiety of being left behind as their comrades disappear one by one.
Candidates include the paramedic Yonny Barrios, or Jose Henriquez, who has been leading twice-daily prayer sessions. But many people believe the last miner up will be shift supervisor Luis Urzua, whose disciplined leadership was credited with keeping the men alive on an emergency food supply during their first 17 days without contact from the outside world.
"It could be Urzua, but it's still not confirmed. The concept of a captain being the last one to abandon ship could be applied," Navarro acknowledged.