58.0°,
Partly Cloudy Once they were lost; now they are found
The story should have ended when the last miner stepped from the Phoenix escape capsule back into the world. It was a perfect moment, and how many of those do we get? It was a happy ending, also in short supply.
After 69 days buried underground in a collapsed Chilean mine, all 33 men emerged, apparently in excellent health and good spirits. Amen.
But it doesn’t end there. Because of the intense media coverage, because of the ability to report the story, beginning to end, above ground and below, everyone involved, from the ordinary mine workers to the president of Chile, will never be the same. After the initial elation, the celebration of a real-life miracle, there may be unforeseen consequences.
Even as I write, there are reports that some miners are already waffling on their mutual agreement to pool all the financial gains of their experience. Already, the men and their families are under siege by agents and media representatives who want “exclusives” to their stories, who promise to put them on TV, sit them down with Larry King, make them stars of their own reality show.
Offers have been proffered of ghost writers, luxury vacations, a dazzling array of hardware, from iPods to TVs, and new clothes, new houses and new jobs.
It is true that once they were lost, buried a half mile underground for more than two months. For the first 17 days of that trial, they had no contact with the outside world. They faced the darkness and the cold walls and the strong possibility that they would die right there in that hole in the ground.
And then they were found. First, contact was made, a small tube was thrust down into the earth, and they received food, medicine, messages from home and, most important, hope that they would be pulled from the darkness and isolation.
Their rescue is the most dramatic of our lifetime. With the best technology, the smartest engineers, the devotion of relatives and friends and the strength of the men themselves, teams of rescuers accomplished the impossible. They reached into the ground and saved 33 men who might easily have perished, starved and alone.
