Drill breaks through to trapped Chilean miners

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SAN JOSE MINE, Chile — Sixty-six agonizing days after their gold and copper mine collapsed above them, 33 miners were offered a way out Saturday as a drill broke through to their underground purgatory.

Champagne sprayed and hard hats tumbled off heads as rescue workers pressed close to the drill, hugging each other and shouting for joy. Down in "Camp Hope," where the miners' relatives waited, people waved flags and cried as one man energetically rang a brass bell even before the siren sounded confirming the escape shaft had reached the miners.

The men are still several days away from efforts to bring them to the surface: the rescue team wants to eliminate even a remote chance of something going wrong on their way up, and plans to carefully inspect the shaft with a video camera before deciding whether to reinforce it.

"I'm so happy, I'm going to have my son back!" cried Alicia Campos, whose son Daniel Herrera is among the trapped.

"Our nervousness is gone now," said Juan Sanchez, whose son Jimmy is stuck in the mine. "Only now can we begin to smile."

The "Plan B" drill won a three-way race against two other drills to carve a hole wide enough for an escape capsule to pull the miners out one by one.

It will still take days to winch them to the surface one at a time in special capsules just wider than a man's shoulders, in one of the most complex rescue attempts in mining history.

The miners themselves must also conduct a controlled explosion down in the mine to make sure there is room for the escape capsules to emerge below.

Mining Minister Laurence Golborne said rescuers would decide later on Saturday how much of the inside of the shaft they will line with metal tubing, and when they will likely start the evacuation. Golborne has previously said it would take between three and 10 days to start evacuating the miners once the shaft was finished.

'Still haven't rescued anybody'

"This is an important achievement," Golborne said. "But we still haven't rescued anybody... This rescue won't be over until the last person below leaves this mine."

The milestone thrilled Chileans, who have come to see the rescue drama as a test of the nation's character and pride, and eased some anxiety among the miners' families.

Video: 'I'm hearing it right now ... they've made it'

But now comes a difficult judgment call: The rescue team must decide whether it's more risky to pull the miners through unreinforced rock, or to insert tons of heavy steel pipe into the curved shaft to protect the miners on their way up.

President Sebastian Pinera reminded Chileans Friday that he had promised "to do everything humanly possible" to keep the miners safe.

Steel pipe would prevent stones from falling and potentially jamming the capsule, but it wouldn't save a miner if the unstable mine suffers another major collapse, and might itself provoke a disastrous setback, Golborne said.

"You would have to put though a 600-meter hole a lot of pipes that weigh more than 150 tons," he warned. "And this structure can be set in a position that also could block the movement of the Phoenix (escape capsule). It's not an decision easy to make."

If Saturday's close video examination persuades engineers that the shaft is smooth, strong and uniform enough to let the capsule pass without significant obstacles, then rescuers plan to start pulling the men out one by one as early as Tuesday, in a made-for-TV spectacle that has captivated the world.

The miners will be initially examined at a field hospital where they can briefly reunited with up to three close relatives. Then, they'll be flown by helicopter in small groups to the regional hospital in Copiapo, were a wing of 33 fresh beds await to care for them for no fewer than 48 hours. Only after their physical and mental health is thoroughly examined will they be allowed to go home.

The wives of some miners have been having their hair done in one of the tents set up as a makeshift hairdressers, as they prepare to be reunited with their husbands.

Some of the men have sent keepsakes like letters, crucifixes and clothes sent down to them in tubes back to the surface from the tunnel they called "hell."

President Sebastian Pinera's wife, Cecilia Morel, has traveled to the mine to help lend psychological support to the miners' relatives.

"Don't let's set our hearts on an exact evacuation date, let's trust the experts," Morel told relatives of the miners overnight. "It's like waiting for a birth. It seems the mountain has started to dilate, but the dilation is two centimeters (under an inch)."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39558833/ns/world_news-americas/