The number and the name sit there among the group for an instant, a coincidence that’s both trivial and frightening. Really, there should only be sixteen or seventeen of them, but thanks to all the men working overtime, or makeup days, there are many more. Twice as many, in fact. So many that no one man has met all the others. Thirty-three in all. How can that be?
Finally, Sepúlveda speaks, loudly, because in the eyes of the men around him he sees confusion and fear. Somos treinta y tres . “There are thirty-three of us. This has to mean something,” he says. “There’s something bigger for us waiting outside.” He says this with the anger of the street fighter he once was, and with the conviction of the father he’s become, a man who’s seen a wall of stone and a half-empty cabinet of food, and who refuses to believe it marks the end of his life’s journey.
* * *
One group goes back up to the rock at Level 190, and to the nearby chimneys and caverns, to listen for the approach of rescuers and then to make noises alerting people on the surface to the presence of living men down below. They’ll be so busy moving rocks, lighting fires, and doing other things that they won’t be able to sleep for a couple of days. But most of the thirty-three trapped men stay in or near the Refuge. A few, in fact, are afraid to leave that room, and won’t for several days, because they can’t forget running for their lives in the collapsing, exploding mountain outside. Sleeping behind the steel door of the Refuge, or just next to it, they can at least pretend they are in a safe place.
“Remember those Mexican miners who were buried underground,” one of the miners says. “They just put a stone over the entrance to the mine and said, ‘They’re dead. This is their tomb.’ They didn’t even bother getting out their bodies.”
“No, you’re wrong,” another miner shouts back. “Right now, our families are all up there. They’re going to make sure they come after us.”
Someone says that the rescuers could carve a new ramp to come and get them. Maybe even a ramp from the brother mine nearby, the San Antonio.
“But it took ten years to make the ramp that’s here now,” says Yonni Barrios, who’s worked at the mine that long. “It would take ten years for them to reach us that way.”
Or maybe we could climb out through the Pit, another miner suggests.
No, that would be suicide, useless, like trying to climb a cliff of shifting and tumbling boulders, several men reply. You’d be sure to fall or be crushed.
One of the older miners says the only solution is to drill for them. A drill can reach them in a few days, send down food, keep them alive while the people on the surface devise a rescue plan.
So they’ll reach us in a day or so, someone says, hopefully.
No, another miner answers. “Did you see a drill out there when we came into work today? No. They’re going to have to bring one in from another mine. And then they’re going to have to build a platform for it. It’s going to take a few days, at least, just to get started.”
It’s past 10:00 p.m. as the men scatter about the Refuge looking for a spot to sit or lie down. There is nothing else to do there, for the moment. Several make beds from the cardboard boxes that once stored various explosives, or with the soft plastic ripped out from the ducts that pumped fresh air from the surface. On a normal day they’d be back in their bunks at the hostel in Copiapó, their bellies warmed by wine or beer or something stronger, or in their homes dozing off to sleep with wives, girlfriends, children around them. This is the hour when their bodies usually give up, surrendering to gravity and sleep after twelve hours on their feet, underground, but tonight the only rest is on the white floor of the Refuge, the sandy surface of the Ramp, catching the eyes of other men, exhausted, disoriented, with the childlike stares of the lost. Ten years for a new
Finally, Sepúlveda speaks, loudly, because in the eyes of the men around him he sees confusion and fear. Somos treinta y tres . “There are thirty-three of us. This has to mean something,” he says. “There’s something bigger for us waiting outside.” He says this with the anger of the street fighter he once was, and with the conviction of the father he’s become, a man who’s seen a wall of stone and a half-empty cabinet of food, and who refuses to believe it marks the end of his life’s journey.
* * *
One group goes back up to the rock at Level 190, and to the nearby chimneys and caverns, to listen for the approach of rescuers and then to make noises alerting people on the surface to the presence of living men down below. They’ll be so busy moving rocks, lighting fires, and doing other things that they won’t be able to sleep for a couple of days. But most of the thirty-three trapped men stay in or near the Refuge. A few, in fact, are afraid to leave that room, and won’t for several days, because they can’t forget running for their lives in the collapsing, exploding mountain outside. Sleeping behind the steel door of the Refuge, or just next to it, they can at least pretend they are in a safe place.
“Remember those Mexican miners who were buried underground,” one of the miners says. “They just put a stone over the entrance to the mine and said, ‘They’re dead. This is their tomb.’ They didn’t even bother getting out their bodies.”
“No, you’re wrong,” another miner shouts back. “Right now, our families are all up there. They’re going to make sure they come after us.”
Someone says that the rescuers could carve a new ramp to come and get them. Maybe even a ramp from the brother mine nearby, the San Antonio.
“But it took ten years to make the ramp that’s here now,” says Yonni Barrios, who’s worked at the mine that long. “It would take ten years for them to reach us that way.”
Or maybe we could climb out through the Pit, another miner suggests.
No, that would be suicide, useless, like trying to climb a cliff of shifting and tumbling boulders, several men reply. You’d be sure to fall or be crushed.
One of the older miners says the only solution is to drill for them. A drill can reach them in a few days, send down food, keep them alive while the people on the surface devise a rescue plan.
So they’ll reach us in a day or so, someone says, hopefully.
No, another miner answers. “Did you see a drill out there when we came into work today? No. They’re going to have to bring one in from another mine. And then they’re going to have to build a platform for it. It’s going to take a few days, at least, just to get started.”
It’s past 10:00 p.m. as the men scatter about the Refuge looking for a spot to sit or lie down. There is nothing else to do there, for the moment. Several make beds from the cardboard boxes that once stored various explosives, or with the soft plastic ripped out from the ducts that pumped fresh air from the surface. On a normal day they’d be back in their bunks at the hostel in Copiapó, their bellies warmed by wine or beer or something stronger, or in their homes dozing off to sleep with wives, girlfriends, children around them. This is the hour when their bodies usually give up, surrendering to gravity and sleep after twelve hours on their feet, underground, but tonight the only rest is on the white floor of the Refuge, the sandy surface of the Ramp, catching the eyes of other men, exhausted, disoriented, with the childlike stares of the lost. Ten years for a new
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