Endgame nearing for trapped miners

October 12, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

SAN JOSE MINE, Chile

They’ll come up one by one in green overalls bearing their names on their chests — first the fittest, then the weakest, twisting in a steel cage that proved itself with four flawless test runs deep into the earth.

The dramatic endgame hastened Monday for the 33 Chilean miners who have braved two months underground, with rescuers reinforcing the escape shaft and the 13-foot-tall rescue chamber sliding, as planned, nearly all the way to the trapped men.

“It didn’t even raise any dust,” Mining Minister Laurence Golborne said.

If all goes well, everything will be in place late today to begin pulling the men out, officials said. The lead psychologist for the rescue team recommended the extractions begin at dawn Wednesday. No official decision was announced, but Andre Sougarret, the rescue-team coordinator, tweeted Monday evening that “today the miners sleep their last night together!”

On Monday, the Phoenix I capsule — the biggest of three built by Chilean navy engineers, named for the mythic bird that rose from ashes — made its first test run after the top 180 feet of the shaft was encased in tubing, the rescue leader said.

Then the empty capsule was winched 2,000 feet, just 40 feet short of the shaft system that has been the miners’ refuge since an Aug. 5 collapse.

“We didn’t send it [all the way] down because we could risk that someone will jump in,” a grinning Golborne told reporters.

Engineers had planned to extend the piping nearly twice as far, but they decided to stop after the sleeve — the hole is angled 11 degrees off vertical at its top before plumbing down, like a waterfall — became jammed during a probe.

Rescue-team psychologist Alberto Iturra said he recommended the first man be pulled out at dawn because the miners are to be taken by Chilean air force helicopters to the nearby city of Copiapo, and fog tends to enshroud the mine at night.

Officials have drawn up a secret list of which miners should come out first, but the order could change after paramedics and a mining expert first descend in the capsule to evaluate the men and oversee the journey upward.