Buried Alive - Chile Mine Rescue

the rescue of 33 miners from the depths of a copper mine in Chile touched the world what began as a catastrophic mining disaster became a story of Hope endurance and technical ingenuity as the world held its breath an unprecedented rescue mission swung into action channel 4 was there capturing this unfolding drama to create the definitive day-by-day accounts the story of how 33 miners buried alive were miraculously saved August the 5th 2010 the San Jose mine in northern Chile is ripped apart by a massive collapse our story begins with retired miner Jose Vega his son Alex was working in the mine and he doesn't sign back in from his shift Alex and 32 other men are missing feared dead Jose knows this mine well he gathers a search party and together they drive down into the mines access tunnel desperately searching for survivors it'd be so Laurie though my tests showed it out our he's out hi Caliendo Kiera different and he ended up Darnell Masamune jose drives deeper and deeper down through the unstable mine but suddenly his path is blocked by a huge slab of fallen rock Jose's only hope of finding his son is if he can find a way down beneath the collapse the main tunnels of this mine which spiral over 2,500 feet into the earth are linked by vertical ventilation shafts so Jose and his team try to upsell down through these shafts the unstable mind is still creaking if it collapses again they could easily be crushed when pocono saurian a teratoma dear lo por que el ansiedad lo minutos en hora si que no se quanto me so Baja mo Avion one lugar que pareció feed me Jose's found a shaft down to beneath the collapse the authorities send in another search party but suddenly the ground shakes again it's a second collapse the ventilation shafts are completely crushed curricula factored our bill chimenea completamente run-ins of the usual Murphy Jose is forced to leave the mine without knowing whether his son is alive or dead Ragini Vnukovo ciento de Cinco Metro de al mining minister Lawrence Colburn is on site coordinating the operation it's a cool new CEO there is that collapse meant that there was no way that we will make this rescue in short P of time am and rescue mission is now out of the question the first of nine high-speed drilling rigs arrived at the site these machines are now the only hope of finding the miners each rig were born expiratory six-inch wide hole into tunnels below the collapse Ronny know is in charge of one of the drilling rigs the big challenge in this is we need to drill fast because what we know is the miners undergone they only have few days to survive after that it is not going to be oxygen more and more of the missing miners friends and families are gathering at the mine desperately hoping for news Corollas husband robustos was an engineer on the day shift Abajo esta mi marido ya Carlo estoy Ferrando yo en talcahuano references oh he hos el fuerte Elva solution the drills are targeted at three levels where the miners might be trapped the first is 1,000 feet down but there's no sign of life the next at 1660 feet again there's just a dark an empty tunnel the last place left to look is a refuge right at the bottom of the mine a room with maybe three days of food but it's gonna take another whole week to reach it rescue teams aim for tunnels near the refuge the only 15 feet wide and 2200 feet down to make matters worse the drills are also deflected by the hard rock so engineers must adjust the trajectory of the drills like trying to carve a football into the top corner of a goal but this goal is half a mile away 14 days have now passed since the mine collapsed the first of four drills is nearing the refuge but it misses the target by less than a hundred feet obviously a big disappointing for the crew you note we normally work for finding minerals you know we we never drill to find lives and you see all these big camp and everybody there you know people crying it's getting critical more days less chances we have to keep drilling until we we hit touch at you know it's been two and a half weeks everyone fears the miners are dead but then in the early hours of the morning all the drilling teams stopped one of the rigs has broken through into a tunnel close to the refuge everyone listens Engineers think they can hear faint banging sounds reverberating up the drill pipe for the next six hours they wait while the drill is winched back to the surface when it finally emerges Goulburn and his team discovers something incredible a note is strapped to the end Adamo bien en el refugio los seres de tres a CCTV camera and phone line are lowered down into the hall out of the darkness the first blood images of the miners emerge Sheila puto Luis Urzua a kaolin minute Roman Arial or ends goal Bandhan Tom oh yeah anis and Ola proceso de ser to Nellie's Tania's jubilant strains of the chilean national anthem reach the surface that's after 17 days facing death in the blackness no one knows how well their bodies and minds have coped after 17 days entombed half a mile underground the 33 miners begin to tell us their story Luis Urzua is the shift supervisor the boss of all the men after the collapse Luis sent out search parties the mine is discovered they weren't just confined to the refuge they're also able to move through over half a mile of tunnels domenico Cena on camera they describe the desperation of those first 17 days Oh Preda no fear Troma luis insisted they strictly russian what little food they had each survived on just a sip of milk and 1 spoon of tuna every two days I even wrote something miracle singer Simona subida movie coma 17 days of starvation has left their bodies close to collapse getting them food is the top priority three 6-inch pores but drilled during the initial search one hit the tunnel outside the refuge the other two broke through higher into a tunnel near the workshop now these narrow holes are critical lifelines hollow tubes will be packed with provisions and winched 2300 feet down to the miners but there's a problem the food they so desperately need could kill them the Chilean government caught up Nasser to give advice medic dr. Jay Polk was part of the team because the miners were eating barely enough to get by probably less than 300 calories a day and in fact they were starving what we worry about is something called refeeding syndrome which can cause a low level of phosphate which can then lead to cardiac dysrhythmias or cardiac failure too much carbohydrate can cause a fatal shock to the system as phosphate is diverted away from the heart so a carefully balanced solution of glucose minerals and vitamins is shipped down engineers now focus on a plan for getting the men out they must bore a half-mile-long shaft into the ground wide enough to lower an escape capsule down to rescue the men this complex feat of Engineering could last months and no one knows how long the miners can survive cheers ring out around the sprawling collection of tents now named Campo the rescue drill has arrived this is the strata 950 it will soon become known as plan a this drill cuts using three rotating tungsten steel discs first it'll punch a 15 inch pilot hole down to the minus then a second device known as a reamer will widen the hole to around 28 inches wide enough to extract the men the strata 950 is designed to drill perfectly straight vertical holes it also needs over 20 litres of water per second to lubricate and cool the cutting bit but there's a problem the mine is in the middle of the Atacama Desert the driest place on earth the nearest water supply is a borehole an hour's drive from the mine at Camp Hope the never-ending convoy of water tankers is a reassuring sign of the effort being made to get the men out alive below ground the miners are putting on a brave face for the cameras but Victor Segovia reveals the strain they're under in a letter to his brother Pedro bricio um Pete calm italico Segura I get my money if you can know estimate under brother sir quickly but wait on the weather event domino NASA iguana de courten encuentro in cerrado annette aporia on the evening of the 31st of August the drilling begins the bad news is that it's gonna take at least three months to get the miners out and they're really suffering the tunnels are so deep they're heated to a constant 95 degrees Fahrenheit by the Earth's core the rock walls are dripping with moisture and the humidity in the air is a suffocating 95% even the darkness poses a threat we worry about the lack of exposure to UV light UVA and B the UVA and UVB help kill bacteria and fungus and viruses without that the men are probably more at risk for fungal infections bacterial infections etc in the mind the oldest miner Mario Gomez is fast approaching his 64th birthday seeker and 56 year-old Jorge guy geass has high blood pressure whilst Jose Ojeda is diabetic with the men already weak a simple infection could be fatal eerie images of the trapped miners have been broadcast around the world one man who found himself watching the news in horror was pennsylvania-based drilling expert Brandon Fisher where we initially saw that they were planning on taking as long as Christmas we felt that we needed to get involved in at least reach out and let people know from Chile that we have technology that could possibly help Brandon picked up the phone jumped on a plane and on day 30 his team roll into Camp Hope with the American built SRAM t1 30 instead of grinding the rock like Panay this drill will smash it compressed air forces the drill head bristling with hardened tungsten steel points into the rock 20 times a second it's twice as fast as the strata 950 but there's a drawback you can't steer this drill but brandon has an idea of how to keep his drill on course he plans to sacrifice one of the three supply bore holes to guide his air-powered hammer Brandon's workshop has designed a special hammer head with a guide piece on the tip that will allow the drill to follow the existing pilot hole early the next day Brandon fires up the rig and Plan B starts to drill but the desert rock is extremely hard no one knows if Brandon's purpose-built hammer drill will stay the course the speed and economics in most cases outweigh the chance or the risk that you take if his pan works the miners could be out in under six weeks the miners start to make some requests cigarettes and alcohol the medics refuse and send down nicotine patches it's not a popular move un pase de una cadena Greta Bray when endo Ontario's Savoy abour que el kumara Levant Eddie Lee you got a yellow fill it up en mi Pro even what about to keep the - spirits off they get to watch a live football match between Chile and the Ukraine while the families watch above-ground the men also follow the action thanks to a projector and half a mile of fiber-optic cable bizarrely one of the miners is a former international football player Franklin loved us he gives the halftime analysis joke there's a little hotel co-host Oh granny so the yellow chili yes rub cannot swallow diplom for him clearly the Ukrainians didn't read the script the match ends in a 2-1 defeat our crew picks up on a strange sense of calm after the fun of yesterday's match it's almost like the rescue is a done deal but a problem with Plan B quickly brings everyone back to the reality of just how hard this is going to be half an hour to go we had a problem because the drill is broken so we have to put a video camera and see what happened there the camera reveals that Plan B's hammer head has disintegrated its hit an iron roof bolt close to a tunnel that no one knew existed the fragments are wedged over 800 feet down the 12 inch hole Plan B is now dead in its tracks day 36 there's more bad news a leaking hydraulic hose shuts down plan a below ground the miners know there's something wrong they can hear all the drilling has stopped Maria Segovia receives a letter from her brother Dario he desperately wants to know what's going on premieres on Malta nerve EOC exemplify bondo resent a la mega lo siento nada y la persona para nós Asad Robison the miners have now been trapped underground for more than a month all attempts to rescue them have stalled at the Sun Jose mine the mission to rescue 33 miners trapped underground is not going well Plan B's drill bit is broken blocking the hole and plan a has been shut down for maintenance but today New Hope thunders in through the gates of the mine a convoy of 42 massive trucks carrying the pieces of a monster new drill this is Plan C a few weeks ago this oil platform was in bits languishing at the bolivian border but when its canadian owners heard about the miners they knew their super-sized rake could beat the competition it's so big it needs to be constructed on a flat piece of land the size of a football pitch for the miners families the rise of this 150 foot tall superfast drill is a reassuring sight suport amenties dicen que es imagine Odyssey n metros diario entonces como McCourty tocino si pero no se passin an El Camino baddest monsta sao peg Aerotech nine days to construct as more footage emerges from underground we're getting to know some of the miners well you don't know Mario Sepulveda acts as an official spokesman he's also a bit of a character ah you miss a las manos de niro's de de sus esposo es hora de queso por la fille de Vincent de que not rosy need oh no Sahana porque yo se malindo save energy no no troll dinero rogen amo con el seguro no friend the plan a drill is back online but running very slowly Plan B's broken drill bit is still stuck totally blocking the hole it's frustrating it's not a quick process to get back out of the ground everyone sucked it up and we quickly started to manufacturing on site fishing tools apparatuses to go down and retrieve the broken metal out of the ground if engineers can't remove the broken drill bit they'll have to abandon the hole and start again from the surface when you are in the drilling business you know you drill a hole one if you lose a hole again then you lose money you know but but if you lose the holes here you can lose lives this evening one of Chile's most sacred icons the Virgin Maria del Carmen is brought to visit the camp this will see Kazakh wind ask the families pray for the men trapped half a mile underground engineers make a last desperate attempt to repair plan B they're using what's called a spider a metal tube with teeth cut into its tip it's lowered down to the bottom of the hole then as it approaches the obstruction it's pushed down under immense pressure this forces the teeth to bend inwards enclosing the metal lump Engineers must now wait and see if their spider has held on to its catch Plan B can finally begin drilling again the miners have now spent 40 days trapped underground 15 days longer than anyone in history psychologists put their resilience down to one word faith faith plays a key role in maintaining your motivation to survive it's the understanding of the people who are trying to rescue that they are technically good that they are working 24/7 on your behalf faith in your family that your family is not giving up on you faith in comrades that are with you they will keep encouraging you and you will keep encouraging them and faith in yourself and in your religion and without those that lose the ability as a team to continue to work toward their survival their faith is about to be rewarded early in the morning with a sudden blast of water Plan B's 12 inch drill bit smashes through the roof but in reality the battle is only half won the 2067 foot shaft must now be widened from 12 to 28 inches Brandon's Pennsylvania workshop has specially built a powerful new drill bid for the task this time it doesn't just have one hammer it has four each hammer can pulverize the rock at a rate of 3 feet per hour if there are no setbacks Brandon could reach the miners in 26 days today is the 18th of September the 200th anniversary of Chilean independence half a mile underground the miners put on a display of patriotism and unity they have to keep their faith that the government led operation will save their lives and soon the alternative doesn't bear thinking about after 44 days entombed in the mine the men's psychological well-being is now as much of a concern as their physical health the authorities have relented and agreed to the repeated demands for cigarettes the massive Plan C rig is finally complete it's 28-inch bit is powerful enough to dig the rescue shaft in just one pass and in only 20 days water will call the three interlocking drill heads which tear at the rock driving debris to the surface everyone now seems to take it for granted the pancy will be the savior it ceremonially switched on by mining Minister Goulburn pama bartylla referee son de la senda better a it Wilson for the first time all three drills are up and running Brandon's high-risk plan B suffers a second catastrophic failure the drill bit is broken again and this time there's no hiding it from the miners instantly they were on the telephone caught us to let us know there was a bit in the hole the only time in my life that I've ever drilled a hole that we have communication below that tells us what's going on on camera the miners joke about the accident but it seems Plan B is no match for the hard rock as their 50th day Underground approaches the miners rescue is still far from assured for the 33 miners it's been a painful waiting game with hopes raised and then dashed but today day 52 brings an exciting development the escape vehicle dubbed the Phoenix arrives painted in the colors of the Chilean flag big alguna technology upon osoto un dia menos que falta para ver ver lo SE cualquier cosa que llegó a la capsula adidas a que falta menos que aqui esta Prante la llegada the men will spend 20 minutes alone unable to move as the capsule is dragged up the half-mile narrow shaft of rock we don't know the miners were wear a harness in case they pass out there's an intercom and oxygen supply if the capsule jams in the shaft there's a mechanism that splits it into the man will then be winched back down into the mine the mission to rescue the miners has taken an unexpected turn once hailed as the savior plan see isn't living up to its promise the rock is so hard the drill is only chewing through around 50 feet a day and hasn't even reached halfway then authorities decide to shut down plan a which hasn't even finished its pilot home underground the miners are busy they need to clear the 20 tons of debris that fall from Plan B's drill every day they've been sent down diesel to fuel their heavy machinery also trapped by the collapse it's dangerous work as day breaks Plan B is just 10 feet away from finishing the escape shaft it's a dangerous time The Rock just about the tunnel roof is weak the threat of another collapse is very real we're gonna take our time going through talking to the miners don't be telling us what they're seeing down there they've reached the final few feet now they're drilling at half speed inching toward their target however everyone's just away we pumped up right now then it's 8 a.m. translation man Plan B has broken through best drillers I've ever seen 33 days 33 miners I just can't believe we're finally here it's just I don't even know what to say I just feel like I'm ready to explode after more than two months underground the plan B team have given the miners the lifeline that would provide their escape this is the hardest job I've ever been on in my life technically and obviously emotionally and it fought us the whole way at the very end you probably saw that the pipe jamming the roof bolts were catching in the teeth and you know there's a oh great we're not gonna be able to make it but they'll yeah we made it with his work done Brandon and the triumphant team B pack up and head home they leave the glory and celebrations to the miners and their families but during the last night before the rescue begins there's fear too no one knows how the men will be affected by their long ordeal in the dark tunnels of the mine yo yo yo quiere haver Lubrizol pero to you Alan tienda en algún momento Evonik where estar solos ESO bahattin a reputable Vieira mucho tiempo solo acostumbrado note Reforma de vivre araba de bomba den a key empezar todo in the early hours of days 69 the final phase of this ambitious rescue mission is about to begin medics have already decided that a few strong men will lead the way in case of problems followed by the ail and weakened - florencio Avalos the first to be filmed alive will be the first to leave as he's winched up the narrow escape shaft his wife Monica and seven-year-old son anxiously waiting alongside Chilean President Sebastian Pinera just after midnight the capsule breaks the surface the cage door is opened and florencio is a free man the next to emerge is the group's energetic spokesman Mario Sepulveda armed with souvenir rocks now one by one the men a winched back to life Alex faker is a tenth man out his dad Jose launched the very first search party no today no par do la veta co vo nesaja garden era Carola is finally reunited with her husband roll the Laster surface to a hero's welcome is the leader credited with saving his men's lives Lewis or sua we want to hear seventy days ago what looked like a horrifying catastrophe has since become a miraculous story of technological ingenuity comradeship and courage witnessed by the world

Channel: undefined

Views: 1,829,082

Rating: 4.9291534 out of 5

Keywords: buried, alive, chile, mine, rescue, mining, disaster, missing, saved, catastrophic, emotional, deep, hole, amazing, story, survivors, drill, hope, endurance, heroes, survive, technical, tunnels, ingenuity, unprecedented, mission, underground, trapped, survival, drama, miracle, miners, san, jose, collape, lost, ventilation, shaft, descend, unstable, dark, atacama, desert, drilling, rig, fear, suffocate, refuge, food, small, life, engineering, alone, suspense, incredible, critical, lifeline, nasa, team, starving, documentary, success, subterranean

Id: Tv8unnxymUs

Length: 47min 7sec (2827 seconds)

Published: Wed May 06 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/RainbowDonkey473]

One of them had his wife find out about his mistress when both women showed up to the rescue site.

[u/Nobelix]

It is a gripping story but I can’t help but think of James Acaster’s bit in one of his shows when he talks about celebrity gossip regarding the miners...

[u/Laotzeiscool]

If they could stay trapped underground for 70 days and stay sane, there is hope we can stay in our house during this time and be ok.

[u/Vamathar]

The story of these men is unbelievable. Talk about having the will to live. Being trapped in complete darkness, the humidity unbearable deep down underground. We're lucky to be able to live during a time where we can witness the footage & hear the stories of these men. Bless the rescuers who worked night & day to get them out.

[u/Chris9a]

I know this is serious stuff but I can only ever think about the McElroy brothers whenever I hear about Chillean miners.

[u/jrcprl]

The guy in the thumbnail backstabbed the other survivors and sold the rights to the story whilst still in the cave.

Then in 2019, he participated in a Chilean reality TV show called "Resistiré" (I will resist), where he befriended everyone and promised he would evenly split the final prize if they voted for him to win. Just as before, he backstabbed the finalists and gave them much less than the agreed amount, and even left 2 of them without money.

[u/IComeInPraise]

Stuck in a mine for 70 days... no sanity would be left in me after 20 minutes

[u/cpbaby1968]

I work at an underground coal mine. I can’t watch this. I read it in The Readers Digest on a plane once and cried so much, so hard the lady beside me asked if someone had died... There’s no way I can watch it.

[u/MrChic]

I love how this documentary gets straight to the point, and starts right on day one in minute one. No long and unnecessary introduction