Los 33

The truth about the Chilean mine collapse

Deep in the Atacama desert, in the troubled 121-year old San José copper-gold mine, Luis Gomez was using his state-of-the art drilling equipment to get deep into a bed which promised an extraordinarily rich seam of gold. It was uncanny; almost supernatural - Luis just knew this was going to be a profitable mineral vein, and hopefully that would mean a small bonus.

Luis was the leader of a team of thirty-two men (including himself). Each one of them had specialist skills. Each one of them had families for whom they were earning a decent and honest living. Each one knew how dangerous the job could be.

Since the year 2000, an average of more than thirty people a year had died in mining accidents in the country, and although not one man would admit it in public, each one prayed to whatever god they believed in each and every morning, asking - nay, begging it would not be their turn to face tragedy that day.

Sadly, not a single one of the multitude of gods were listening that day.

As Luis was drilling with cautious optimism, his equipment suddenly fused. He swore. Calling for his second-in-command, Mario Avalos, to bring a bright light, he went to investigate. On closer inspection it appeared that he had drilled into something a great deal tougher than he had been anticipating. Sometimes this would indicate that wonderfully dense veins of mineral ore were close; other times it could be an indication that it was time to end this shaft and start construction on another one.

But Luis had his feeling.

There was a method to coping with these harder portions of rock. One should drill and chip away at the softer rock around it, prop the shaft ceiling up with numerous steel poles, and then use explosives to crack and shatter the harder rock face. Of course, each explosion would carry with it a risk of tunnel collapse - but the owners of the mind were struggling financially, and if Luis didn’t take that risk, he would be disciplined, maybe even fired.

So with this in mind, Luis and Mario together, using the backup drill, attacked the softer rock.

***

It was strange. A few hours later they had drilled to the left, to the right and even above what appeared to be a lozenge of hard rock some fifteen feet tall, yet just three feet wide and four feet deep. What was stranger was that it was not made of anything native to the geology of Chile. It was immensely dark in colour, a black so deep that it seemed to swallow the light from Luis and Mario’s rig.

They could of course now just move their equipment around it and continue with the rock behind. But Luis was a miner, and miners are always curious where strange rock is concerned.

Knowing there were men in his team with great experience, Luis called every single one over. Thirty-two men were now closely examining this tall, thin structure. One, Yonni Henriquez, suddenly called out.

“Ey, Luis - here! There’s writing!”

Luis walked over and inspected what Yonni had seen. It was clearly writing, but not like any Luis had seen before in his life. It had been etched into the rock, perhaps once quite deeply, but it had now been smoothed over by the ravages of time - and maybe the recent drilling and scraping.

But no-one could figure out what it said. It was more akin to hieroglyphics than a written language of today. The most repeated picture was one of a thin skeletal figure, always followed by a circle with a cross going through it.

“Perhaps it’s a warning” said Mario.

“Against what?” Luis answered.

“Against trying to find out what is inside. I don’t like anything about this. I think there’s something inside, and if someone has gone to this much trouble to seal it up in this rock which none of us have seen anything like before... well, I think it should stay there.”

“Ha! Scared of the bogeyman, Mario?” asked Yonni.

“Don’t be stupid man, I’m just saying you know, when you come from a mining family, you hear stories from the old folk.”

“What like?”

“Well in the old days there was no automated machinery. There was just men with pickaxes. Each man would be responsible for a tunnel of their own, barely big enough for them to crawl through. My grandfather said that sometimes - especially if he was one of the last to finish of a day - he would hear noises coming from within the rock. Cries, screams, whatever. He said it was ghosts from the dawn of human evolution.”

“Oh Mario, you don’t believe in that kind of thing, do you?”

“Don’t we all? Do you pray at the start of every day, and give thanks at the end of it?”

“Well yes, but...”

“All I am saying is that we should be cautious.”

But caution was not on the mind of Ariel Barrios. He was a huge, bear of a man. Yet in certain areas he could be extremely delicate. One of these was explosives.

“Let’s blow it open” said Ariel.

“You think you can?” asked Luis.

“Of course, I’ve never been beaten by an explosives challenge yet. Let’s crack that mother right down the middle.”

***

And so, after surprisingly little debate, Ariel placed his explosives. The men retreated to a safe distance, and all that was left for him to do was activate the electronic fuse.

He did so.

And that was when the disaster began.

The blast reverberated around the shaft, and - by a million-to-one chance - was at the exact frequency that was required to set off a chain reaction of small but significant rock movements which ended with the collapse of the main access shaft.

The thirty-two men were now trapped seven hundred metres below the surface of the earth, with no way to return.

At least one thing had gone right however - the large block of dark matter was cleft cleanly in two. Whatever had been inside what turned out to have been a hollow block however was no longer there.

Luis radioed up to the control room almost a kilometre above him.

“Guys, we’re trapped”.

***

It did not take long for the news story to go global. The men had enough provisions to keep them alive for a number of weeks, but how would they get out? Many governments came together to offer a variety of theories for rescue attempts.

News channels across the world showed countless CGI reconstructions of the blast and how the various rescue proposals stacked up against each other. In the end it was decided to dig a new shaft, just wide enough for a one-man capsule to be sent down and back up - the men being brought back up one by one.

The project however would take time. The 32 men had enough food and drink to last them 3 months - but would they remain sane trapped underground for that long?

***

After 69 days, the men were brought to the surface. The event was televised across the world. The miners’ friends and family were there to greet them at the surface. As each man surfaced, loved ones hugged and kissed him, glad that he had made it back to safety.

However, one man - a tall, thin gentleman, surprisingly well dressed having been stuck underground for so long - met with no happy relatives. Hunched over, he stepped out of the capsule, walked away from the crowds and disappeared into a nearby forest. It almost went unnoticed, such was the clamour and joy from the others.

One man however, Lawrence Fenix had noticed. Lawrence was the man who had masterminded the rescue attempt. The disappearance of the man greatly disturbed him. And so, after the jubilant celebrations, he replayed and replayed the video of the event, sitting in his dark office.

On the fifth time he had watched the whole thing through, hairs began to rise on the back of his neck. He picked up the phone to the Chilean minister for mining.

“Sir, I think we may have a problem.”

“How can there be a problem?” said the minister. “Everything went as expected!”.

“Not everything.” replied Lawrence. “Watch the footage again. You remember how many men were trapped down there?”

“Of course - thirty two.”

“Well, thirty-three came up.”