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-In this remote desert moonscape of northern Chile, media on a scale rarely seen. Tonight, everything is in place for what may be the most challenging rescue ever attempted on Earth. -I called the most-reputed expert and he told me, "Forget it, they're all dead." -All of us at the mine site lived and breathed the tension every hour of the day. [reporter] The plight of these miners has captured the attention and the hearts of the entire world. [reporter] 33 miners trapped a half mile underground in a gold mine in Chile.
[reporter] There are 33 men buried alive. [reporter] No one has ever been trapped so long and survived. [astronaut] From outer space, and best wishes to all the miners in Chile. -We had no good news. We only have failures. -We had a major breakdown. We were gonna be cancelled. I felt heartbroken. [reporter] Chile is consulting with NASA about how to keep people alive and sane. -They were living the same day, every day, without knowing if it's day or night -You knew there was 33 hearts beating below your feet that needed you to be doing what you were doing.
They were living in hell. -Even the smallest infection could be a death sentence. -The weight on our shoulders. It was so stressful. I mean, it was terrible. [♪ dramatic music playing] -This was the most challenging rescue, really in history. [reporter] We're watching something that really hasn't been seen since the Apollo Mission.
[♪ dramatic music playing] -I was responsible for reporting on the events across Central America, South America for ABC News. I had reported from Chile before. And it is one of the most spectacularly beautiful places on Earth. In 2010 I reported on this story in the Atacama Desert. The mining industry is the backbone of Chile's economy. It's a really modern mining country, and has incredibly sophisticated mines. But the San José mine was not at all like that.
This was an antique, badly-run mine, known for its safety problems. You didn't go there because you were, you know, at the top of your game. You went there because you needed a job. -Every girl needs her father. It was really difficult to understand why he left all the time. I always used to say to my mother, why are the other fathers, uh, didn't do that?
Like, they don't do that, like, they have normal jobs. The mine that my father was working is really dangerous, and he was always worried because he knew that one day something will happen. -I received a text message on my phone that says, "There is an accident on San José mine. There are people trapped." My first thought was, well, get them out. I was in Ecuador with President Piñera, I didn't know where Minas San José was. I didn't know about the mine. But it sounded like a severe accident. So, President Piñera told me that I have to go to the mine to supervise the situation.
I was told that rescue teams have organized themselves and they wanted to go inside the mine to try to rescue them. [♪ somber music playing] -The situation that I saw when I arrived there was very hectic. There was nobody really in charge, and the families were angry. I had been Minister of Mining only six months, and really, I didn't have expertise in mining. I remember, I called one of the most-reputed expert in the mining sector in Chile.
I say, "Well what's your opinion?" and he told me, "Forget it, they are all dead." [Laurence] There were more or less 200, 300 people outside the mine, camping, asking for information. And I said, "I will share with you anything that I can find out, anything that I can learn." I had a meeting with the rescue teams, and I ask, "Well, what's going on? What happened? What we should do?" And I remember one rescuer that told me, "Ministry, if you ask me to go down again, I will do it, but um, Minister, we are, we are [bleep] really."
That's word that they used. [overlapping Spanish chatter] [Laurence] In the afternoon, I dry my tears and I go down into the camp. -I took a chair and I stand up and I take a microphone from a, an ambulance. I start explaining what had happened.
[Laurence] I couldn't continue speaking. I felt a knot in my throat. We couldn't continue with this rescue effort. It was too dangerous. We decided to stop. -When we arrived to the mine in San José, there were a lot of feelings. They told us they will not continue to try to rescue them.
I feel like my whole world, uh, just fall down. [Laurence] The situation was peaceful, but it was becoming heated. [Laurence] We didn't have the resources, and we couldn't continue because it was too dangerous for the rescuers. The responsibility for the rescue, especially with a mining company, is the company itself. It's not a governmental responsibility. So, we had to stop because they couldn't do it. So, I was surprised when President Piñera called me and
said that he will go to the mine. [Laurence] The President arrived. I go to pick him up. We went to the mine. He met the families, and he could see that, politically speaking, this was a tricky situation for the government. That is the moment where everything changed. [Laurence] He said, we will do everything that is in our power to find them. Not to rescue, he didn't promise to rescue because we didn't know if there were anybody to be rescued. But he committed that the government will be involved looking for the guys.
Five month earlier, there had been a massive earthquake in Chile and many people have died. The government response was heavily criticized and he wanted this to be totally different. I was nominated in charge. So, if things goes wrong, probably I will be prosecuted. The president told me that we can get whatever we need. I start asking myself, "Who else can help me in this?" And so, I called Codelco, the biggest mining company in Chile. André Sougarret is an engineer that had a lot of experience in underground mining.
He arrived there with René Aguilar. -One of the first things that we did was to have a conversation with the owners of the mine. They told us that, at the time of the collapse, the miners were working near the bottom of the mine. This mine had a very unusual shape. It's a big tunnel going down a ramp, spiraling down like a corkscrew, until you get to around 2600 feet. That is nearly two Empire States Building, stacked on top of each other.
[Laurence] The logical deduction is if they were not already dead, they should go to the refuge which is a room inside the mine where you have some food, some first aid kits. Theoretically, if we could make a hole with a drilling machine to reach that refuge, maybe you can find somebody. [Laurence] I was told that, because of the weight and the rotation of the machine, natural deviation of the drilling will be around 5% away from your target.
[Laurence] These instruments are not made for doing very precise holes. To try to get a target that was very small, underground, 2300 feet away, is like to try to point a house that is seven blocks from here with a stick. You will tremble, and it's not easy to, to just hit that point. That was the challenge. [René] One of the toughest things that we faced was this idea we might be losing miners because we are not getting there on time.
We didn't know anything about their status, if they were alive at all. If they had air to breathe. If they had water. If they had food, or anything. What if, because of this, we lost the life of this miner whose family is here, and I'm talking to them right now? So, that level of pressure was enormous. [Laurence] After some days, we had many machines drilling. All of them had problem before, either that the hammer broke, the machines failed, or deviated significantly.
[Laurence] We had to try something different, otherwise we are gonna continue with the same results. We had this problem of deviation of the drilling. I called an expert in Australia, I asked if he could integrate with the geologist to help with the process. He accepted. So, we send a plane from the air force of Chile to get these machines, and to get the specialist. -When I first arrived on site, we needed to know the layout of the mine, and that's when we first learnt that the historical record keeping probably wasn't the best on this particular mine site.
We couldn't be 100% certain of the exact depth measurements, so, it was a bit of a worry. Once we started surveying, then we could really see the extent of the situation, and it was, it was fairly dire. There were already iron rigs drilling, everyone trying to drill the fastest hole they could. Everyone getting very emotional and wanting to help, they all wanted to be the first person to, to, to get success, that everyone was rushing, and this was part of the problem. This was, this was making the drill holes bend even more away from the target. And I remember having several conversations, "You need to it slow down a little bit to make things go a little bit straighter."
Wasn't happening. Everyone wanted to go as fast as they could. So, we needed a new plan. [Kelvin] I was working closely with the Chilean geologists. We all probably worked more than we slept, I think. Every single day you'd be on the mine site, sometimes you'd finish at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. Home for a couple hours, and then, and then straight back in there. There were several geologists working there, one I became quite friendly with.
Nicolas Cruz knew more about targeting, and how the drill holes were behaving. A few days in, we noticed when we were reviewing the maps and targeting, analyzing the data, that there was a pattern. Almost all the drill holes were about 35 degrees off target. And everyone just stopped. We kinda had a light bulb moment then. We'd been pointing the drill rigs in the wrong direction. So, we thought we're gonna have to do something wild here, let's move the rig.
Let's point it 35 degrees away from the target, and see if the ground will physically change the course of the drill hole. Now, of course, this was a new plan. I remember Nicolas saying, "We've gotta talk to Laurence." [Laurence] The summary of the idea was to try to point the drilling to a different target in order to get the target that we are looking for. If you continue doing the same things, you are gonna get the same results, so we had to change it. It was worth it to try.
[machines whirring] After some days, we had many machines working. We had this drilling that reached 1,500 feet, and then 1,600, 1,800, 2,000 feet, 2,200 feet. The refuge was around 2,300 feet deep. We were close to our target. The adrenaline was pumping. [Kelvin] We had drill rigs pointing away from the target, this crazy idea. Everything's riding on this, this new plan. Seeing all the families and the people out the front and the, and the pressure, I was thinking, "Oh, it's gonna work."
[Kelvin] Unfortunately, the first hole went past the depth that the refuge chamber should've been at. Didn't hit the target. [Laurence] It was very frustrating. And we have failed again. [♪ eerie music playing] [Scarlette] I was with my little brother, and it was like a funeral for us. I feeled like I just want this to finish. I don't want to wait anymore.
Even if my father is dead, I really want to know now because the anxious that I feeled on that time is, was almost killing me. -I'll be honest, it was a bit of a challenge. Not knowing exactly where the target is. It's pretty much like drilling with spaghetti and hitting a needle in a haystack. But, you know, all we had was hope. You just had to keep going. We, we could do no more. We had to do the best we could with, with what we got.
[muffled drill whirring] [Laurence] If you hit something, you need to start taking out all the pipes. Finally, we are getting out the head of the drilling machine. [Laurence] And that's when we saw something very unusual. And I said, "It comes painted. It's red!" And the guys said to me, "It was clean Minister, I'm sure it was clean."
Hey! -Once we got the last bit, we realized that the, on, on the hammer at the end of the drill, something was there. [overlapping Spanish chatter] [in Spanish] Thank you, thank you. [Scarlette] I didn't know how to react. I just was crying. Like, I couldn't say anything. For me it was a miracle.
[overlapping Spanish chatter] [René] It was craziness, you know. Still now I, I get emotional. But that day was, I think I cried like one hour non-stop. Uh, it was beautiful. And a moment of joy, strange joy, a lot of tears. [Laurence] We were so excited, and really happy because they were all alive. But I am not forgetting that we still have to get them out.
[René] A rescue like this has never been attempted in the world before. Getting them out alive was like Mission Impossible.
