(Note: Posting of this article was delayed by a major outage of the webhosting provider causing this blog to go offline for several days. The published date has been adjusted backward to reflect when it was meant to go live here.)
Mario Sepulveda, 39, is the second miner to leave the San Jose mine with the Phoenix rescue capsule the night of October 13, 2010. An accident trapped 33 miners for more than nine weeks in the mine located near Copiapo, Chile. CREDIT: HUGO INFANTE/GOVERNMENT OF CHILE
Major props go out to the entire country of Chile for pulling off a picture-perfect rescue of all 33 trapped miners.
If you have not already seen it then by all means take a look at CNN’s 360-degree view of the mountain location of the mine. For such a desolate area it was amazing to see the mass of humanity which was basically camping out awaiting the rescue operation to succeed.
As incredible an undertaking as the rescue was, much of the credit goes to the miners themselves for functioning as a group to survive for 17 days entirely cut off from the outside world with no idea if anyone would ever find them at all. Or if anyone was even trying to after more than two weeks.
It is also nice to see how the American government and private companies contributed to the rescue efforts. While it received some news coverage here in the States, I have no idea if our involvement was recognized by the news media of other countries. Nor does it matter. Helping is its own reward and all those who contributed from Chile and around the world, I’m sure that seeing the face of each miner as he exited the rescue capsule was a priceless joy. (continue reading…)
