Seventeen days. That is how long the world waited before learning whether the 33 men trapped inside the San Jose copper-gold mine were alive or dead. On August 22, 2010, an exploratory drill bit was pulled to the surface and rescuers found a scrap of paper taped to it, written in red marker: "Estamos bien en el Refugio los 33" -- We are well in the Refuge, the 33. The note, now one of the most famous messages in Chilean history, set in motion an international rescue operation that would captivate a billion television viewers and redefine what was considered possible in mine rescue engineering.
The San Jose mine sits 45 kilometers north of Copiapo in the Atacama Desert, a small copper and gold operation owned by the San Esteban Mining Company. The company had been fined 42 times between 2004 and 2010 for breaching safety regulations, and eight workers had died at the site between 1998 and 2010. With only three inspectors assigned to the Atacama Region's 884 mines, oversight was stretched impossibly thin. At 14:00 on August 5, 2010, a massive section of rock collapsed inside the mine while 34 people were underground. One miner near the entrance escaped. The remaining 33 retreated deeper into the mine, only to discover that a safety ladder required by code was missing. They fell back to a small emergency refuge designed for a handful of people, located 700 meters below the surface and five kilometers from the mine's entrance.
The miners rationed two days' worth of emergency food over more than two weeks, each man surviving on roughly two spoonfuls of tuna, half a biscuit, and half a glass of milk every 48 hours. They organized themselves under the leadership of shift foreman Luis Urzua, establishing work schedules, sanitation routines, and a rudimentary democracy for group decisions. When the eighth exploratory borehole finally broke through on August 22, the men had spent 17 days in near-total darkness with no contact with the surface. Once the borehole established communication, a supply line was threaded through the narrow shaft. Fresh food, medicine, letters from family, and eventually small projectors and games were lowered down. NASA sent advisors, drawing on decades of research into the psychological effects of prolonged confinement in extreme environments.
The rescue demanded a feat of precision drilling that had never been attempted. Three separate plans ran simultaneously. Plan A used a Strata 950 raise borer to widen an existing borehole. Plan B employed a Schramm T130XD drill, originally designed for oil exploration and brought in by a team from the Center Rock company in Pennsylvania. Plan C deployed a Canadian-made RIG-421 operated by Calgary-based Precision Drilling Corporation. Each plan faced distinct engineering challenges -- the rock was hard diorite, the depth extreme, and the target a space barely wider than the drill shafts themselves. Plan B won the race, breaking through to the miners at 08:05 on October 9, 2010. The resulting shaft was just wide enough for a rescue capsule.
The capsule was called Fenix 2 -- a steel cylinder 54 centimeters in diameter, painted in the red, white, and blue of the Chilean flag. On October 12, the rescue began. Dubbed Operacion San Lorenzo after the patron saint of miners, the operation sent rescue worker Manuel Gonzalez down first at 23:18 to prepare the men for extraction. Each miner wore compression socks to prevent blood clots, a girdle to stabilize blood pressure, and sunglasses against the desert light they had not seen in over two months. Florencio Avalos, 31, was the first miner brought to the surface. Shift foreman Luis Urzua was the last. The extraction that had been projected to take 33 hours was completed in roughly 22. An estimated one billion people worldwide watched the live broadcast -- one of the largest television audiences for a non-sporting event in history.
President Sebastian Pinera dismissed top officials from Chile's mining regulatory agency immediately after the collapse and ordered a comprehensive overhaul. The accident produced 30 reform proposals covering everything from mine hygiene standards to coordination between regulatory bodies. The San Esteban Mining Company faced criminal charges but was never successfully prosecuted. Several miners struggled with post-traumatic stress and financial difficulties in the years that followed; the promised fame proved more complicated than the rescue itself. A 2015 film, The 33, starred Antonio Banderas as Mario Sepulveda, the miner who had served as the group's unofficial spokesman underground, ending his video dispatches to the surface with the phrase: "Over to you in the studio." The mine remains closed. The desert above it looks no different than it did before -- dry, still, and unremarkable, the kind of place where nothing is supposed to happen.
Located at 27.16S, 70.50W in the Atacama Desert, 45 km north of Copiapo, Chile. The San Jose mine site is visible as a small industrial scar in otherwise barren desert terrain. Best viewed from 3,000-5,000 feet AGL. Nearest airport: Copiapo Desierto de Atacama (SCAT/DAT). The terrain is arid and mountainous, with the Andes rising to the east. The mine sits along a road leading into low desert hills -- look for the access road and any remaining surface infrastructure.