Trapped by Marc Aronson

Author:Marc Aronson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Published: 2011-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

Urzúa used his mapping skills to figure out how the men could make best use of the mine—setting up one room for games and recreation, another as a chapel for prayer, and a small space, on the side and out of sight, for the newly established phone line. The miners would need privacy, so no one would see them crying when they spoke to their families.

Getting back to normal came in many ways.

Peña was a runner. By the time the miners made contact with the drillers, moving was the furthest thing from his mind. Weak, hungry, and waiting for death, he had curled up into a little ball, like a baby. But now that he was eating again and feeling better, he began training. He found a way to cut down his heavy boots so they just reached his ankles, and set out. “I ran to forget I was trapped,” he later said. “I ran in the dark.… I went to the depths, the lowest of the low, but I kept running.” Soon he was strong enough to cover some five miles a day. As Peña ran, he kept singing “Return to Sender,” a song by his hero Elvis Presley. “I was saying to that mine, ‘I can outrun you, I’m going to run until you’re just tired and bored of me,’ and I did it.”

Dr. Mike Duncan, the leader of the NASA team, spoke with the miners by phone, his broken Spanish only lasting through “¿Cómo estás? … Bien,” before a translator had to help out. Duncan was just one of many topside people who began sending encouragement down the mine. Thursday, September 2, brought bad and good news: the Strata 950 was moving so slowly it had gotten down to only about 130 feet, and worse, it would have to pause. Geologists had found a fault in the rock that made drilling dangerous. The rescue timeline now surely stretched out months ahead. But the doves carried a special gift—prayer beads and rosaries, blessed by the Pope and sent directly from Rome. For the miners, those who had been religious before the accident as well as those whose faith grew down in the mine, this was a powerful form of blessing.

On September 4, four people who had survived that terrible plane crash in the Andes in 1972 arrived. “Remain united and together,” one urged the men. And then, looking ahead to life after their final rescue, the four offered some financial advice: Don’t “give away too much.” They knew from their own experience that there would soon be a scramble to publish books and film movies about the miracle of Chile. If everything continued to go well and the miners got home safely, the disaster that very nearly took their lives would be their ticket to fame and, very likely, fortune.

To round out the string of gifts, on September 8 the South Korean technology giant Samsung sent a new product, a cell phone that included a tiny projector preloaded with a message from President Piñero and, more important, the Chile–Ukraine soccer match.

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