Forging bonds to survive below Earth's surface
Reinaldo Gomez writes a letter last week to send down to his brother, Mario Gomez, one of the 33 workers trapped in a mine in Chile.NEW YORK TIMES / FERNANDO RODRIGUEZ CHANCKS
Published: Wednesday, September 1, 2010 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 at 10:20 p.m.
Mario Gomez is all too familiar with the hardships of prolonged confinement. While still in his 30s, his family said, he survived as a stowaway on a ship for 11 days, living below deck on little more than bits of chocolate and drops of water collected in a shoe -- an ordeal so trying it brought him closer to God.
Now, at 62, Gomez is the oldest of the 33 miners trapped nearly half a mile underground here and has become the spiritual guide to his men, government officials said. He has organized a small subterranean chapel and is serving as unofficial aide to the psychologists working on the surface to cope with the miners' sadness and fear.
Miners are a hardened breed. Gomez and the other men leading the group below are no exception. They come from traditional mining families and together have more than 90 years of experience working underground.
They have survived accidents, closings and the respiratory illnesses that plague the profession driving Chile's economy. Now they are trying to help themselves and the others endure what could be a four-month stay in the belly of the Earth.
Aside from Gomez, there is Luis Urzua, the 54-year-old shift leader who organizes their work assignments, is helping to map the path of their rescue hole and even insists that the miners wait until everyone gets food through the narrow borehole to the surface before anyone can eat.
Then there is Yonny Barrios, 50, the group's impromptu medical monitor. He is drawing on a six-month nursing course he took about 15 years ago to administer medicines and wellness tests that health officials are sending down through the 4-inch borehole and then analyzing in a laboratory on the surface.
"They are completely organized," said Jaime Manalich, Chile's health minister. "They have a full hierarchy. It is a matter of life and death for them."
After the cave-in Aug. 5, the 33 men were thought to be lost, until Chilean engineers found them 17 days later -- all miraculously alive and unharmed.
As hope waned, a drill operator felt some vibrations. When a 150-pound drilling hammer was raised, it had red paint on it. Later, it came back with a bag tied to the drilling tube, said Laurence Golborne, the country's mining minister. Inside were two letters: a three-page note from Gomez to his wife and a small note in red lettering.
"We are fine in the refuge, the 33," it read.
Since then, officials have been scrambling to aid the miners, and Monday night workers, began boring the rescue hole. It is expected to take three to four months to complete.
The miners will play a critical role in their own escape, making their organization and leadership essential, officials said. The men will need to clear 3,000 to 4,000 tons of rock that will fall as the rescue hole is cleared, officials said. The work will require the men to work in shifts 24 hours a day. On Sunday, relatives had their first verbal communication with the miners since the cave-in, in one-minute conversations via a modified telephone. The day before relatives also recorded four- to five-minute video messages for the miners.
"We talked about the house, about all the bills that needed to be paid," said Ximena Contreras, the wife of Paulo Rojas, one of the miners. "He was in very good spirits. He said he loves me a lot."
Health officials said they were concerned about the emotional state of several miners in particular, some of whom did not want to appear in the first video the group made last week.
But even the reluctant miners reportedly went on camera in a second video, after Urzua persuaded them.
Urzua began his 31-year mining career in his early 20s at his stepfather's side. Several uncles were also miners, said his mother, Nelly Iribarren, 78.
"His passion was always topography," she said, adding that he loved to sketch roads and landscapes.
Urzua is now using that skill to aid in the miners' rescue, officials said, helping prepare a map of the chamber and the adjoining tunnels where they are holed up some 2,300 feet down.
Day to day, he also is helping to order the men's lives, insisting the miners wait for the rations for all 33 -- sent four times a day through the borehole -- and that the men eat together, Manalich said.
Barrios, the medical monitor, started working in the mines when he was 16. He has a diploma from a technical school in electronics and radio, his wife said. But it was the nursing course he took at a mine in the 1990s that has proved essential to officials.
Barrios is taking the miners' temperature and blood pressure and monitoring their weight. He is also administering tests to prevent against infection and malnutrition, as well as vaccinating the miners for flu, tetanus and pneumonia, Manalich said.
"He has become a precious thing for us," the health minister said.
This story appeared in print on page A2
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