Hallelujah! Finally Some Good News!!! Miners Being Rescued from Chilean Collapse

It was exciting to watch the start of the rescue operations of the Chilean miners last night before I went to bed!  I watched the first two guys come to the surface and be reunited with their families.  The excitement continues.  Let's pray that all are safely returned.

From the AP this morning ... (emphasis added)

Chile joyout at clock-work like miner rescue

By FRANK BAJAK and VIVIAN SEQUERA
Associated Press Writers

SAN JOSE MINE, Chile (AP) - The miners emerged like clockwork, jubilantly embracing wives, children and rescuers and looking remarkably composed Wednesday after languishing for 69 days in the depths of a mine that easily could have been their tomb.

The anxiety that had accompanied the final days of preparation melted away at 12:11 a.m. when the stoutest of the 33 miners, Florencio Avalos, emerged from the missile-like rescue capsule smiling broadly after his half-mile journey to the surface.

In a din of cheers, he hugged his sobbing 7-year-old son and wife and then President Sebastian Pinera, who has been deeply involved in an effort that had become a matter of national pride.

The most ebullient of the bunch came out second, an hour later.

"I think I had extraordinary luck. I was with God and with the devil. And I reached out for God," said Mario Sepulveda as he awaited the air force helicopter ride to a nearby hospital where all the miners were to spend 48 hours under medical observation.  The miners have survived more time trapped underground than anyone on record, and the world was captivated by their endurance and unity as officials carefully planned their rescue.

Chile exploded in joy and relief at the first, breakthrough rescue just after midnight in the coastal Atacama desert.
...

The methodical pace at which the miners were delivered from the mountain matched the rescue team's prediction that all would be free after about 36 hours, barring major glitches.

After the fifth miner, the rescuers paused to lubricate the spring-loaded wheels that gave the 13-foot-tall capsule a smooth ride through the shaft.  Then they brought up the sixth and seventh.

As dawn broke over the rock-strewn moonscape, eight men had been pulled from the mine in a little over seven hours, putting the rescue on track to end before the sun rises Thursday.

The entire rescue operation was meticulously choreographed, with no expense spared in bringing in topflight drillers and equipment - and drilling three separate holes into the copper and gold mine.

Mining is Chile's lifeblood, providing 40 percent of state earnings, and Pinera put his mining minister and the operations chief of state-owned Codelco, the country's biggest company, in charge of the rescue. It went so well that its managers abandoned what a legion of journalists had deemed an ultraconservative plan for restricting images of the rescue.

A huge Chilean flag that was to obscure the hole from view was moved aside so the hundreds of cameras perched on a hill above could record images that state TV also fed live.

That included the surreal moment when the capsule dropped into the chamber for the first time where the bare-chested miners, most stripped down to shorts because of the subterranean swelter, mobbed the rescuer who emerged to serve as their guide to freedom.

"This rescue operation has been so marvelous, so clean, so emotional that there was no reason not to allow the eyes of the world - which have been watching this operation so closely - to see it," a beaming Pinera told a news conference after Avalos was brought to the surface.

When the last man surfaces, it promises to end a national crisis that began when 700,000 tons of rock collapsed Aug. 5, sealing the 33 in the lower reaches of the mine.

The first capsule came out of the manhole-sized opening, and Avalos stepped out as bystanders cheered, clapped and broke into a chant of "Chi! Chi! Chi! Le! Le! Le!" - the country's name.

Avalos, the 31-year-old second-in-command of the miners, was chosen to be first because he was in the best condition. The next three men out, including the lone foreigner, Carlos Mamani of Bolivia, followed because they were deemed the fittest of body and mind.

The next group of 10 included miners with health problems such as hypertension, diabetes and skin ulcers.

Sepulveda's shouts were heard even before the capsule surfaced.

After hugging his wife, he jokingly handed souvenir rocks from the mine to laughing rescuers. Then he bounded out behind other officials behind a barrier and thrust a fist upward like a prizefighter.

Putting him on a gurney for a short ambulance ride to a triage center - the protocol for all the miners - almost seemed like overkill.
...

The last miner was slated to be shift foreman Luis Urzua, whose leadership was credited for helping the men endure 17 days with no outside contact after the collapse. The men made 48 hours' worth of rations last before rescuers reached them with a narrow borehole to send down more food.
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Gee, in light of how Chile's President Pinera was present and supportive during the whole ordeal, I wonder how our Dear Leader would have reacted in such a situation here, given his limp-wristed response to troop reinforcements in Afganistan and his total screw-up of the Gulf oil spill. 

I should Bush would have been blamed.