Alive: 33 Chilean miners trapped 17 days

August 23, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

SANTIAGO, Chile

Chile’s president euphorically waved the note, written deep inside a collapsed mine, that his country waited 17 agonizing days to see: “All 33 of us are fine in the shelter,” one of the trapped miners wrote in red letters.

Authorities and relatives of the miners hugged, climbed a nearby hill, planted 33 flags and sang the national anthem Sunday after a probe sent some 2,257 feet deep into the mine came back with the note. “Today all of Chile is crying with excitement and joy,” President Sebastian Pinera said.

The miners’ ordeal may have just begun: Rescuers say it could take four months — until around Christmas — to get them out.

The men already have been trapped underground longer than all but a few miners rescued in recent history. Last year, three miners survived 25 days trapped in a flooded mine in southern China, and two miners in northeast China were rescued after 23 days in 1983. Few other rescues have taken more than two weeks.

For the moment, however, news that the men even survived an Aug. 5 tunnel collapse outshines all other details.

Word of the miners’ survival was a rush of good news in a country still rebuilding from a magnitude 8.8 earthquake Feb. 27 and its resulting tsunami, which together killed at least 521 people and left 200,000 homeless.