There's not often I get emotional but i must admit to having a tear or two as I witnessed the first miner Florencio Avalos emerging from being entombed 2000' below ground a truly amazing amazing sight. Not often are there news stories of human trial and endeavor to top this. Well done those miners and well done those rescuers
I was expecting Davina McCall to pop up at some point!
You have to admire the courage of the (now) four rescue workers who have descended into the abyss to make sure all is well for the recovery of the 33 miners.
An incredible story.
I'm not sure I could imagine many Presidents hugging each miner as he is released from the capsule. The Chilean President, his wife and the mines minister have captured peoples imagination.
Well, despite any scepticism, it's a success story all round.
All 33 miners and the 6 brave men who volunteered to descend into the depths to help in the rescue are all back in one piece.
Just a point - and I'm not knocking anybody in this - but it wasn't a 'miracle'. It was something much, much better than that.
It was a result of loads of skilled and imaginative people getting stuck in and coming through with a solution to an almost impossible problem.
The mining experts came up with how they would drill an access shaft safely down to where the men were trapped.
The design engineers in NASA and, I believe, the Chilean Navy who designed, developed, tested and proved and evntually used the rescue pod Phoenix.
All within just a few weeks.
The medical staff who have been monitoring and remotely looking after the men.
The families who set up camp Hope and even included a school so the children could stay close and their fathers didn't have the worry of them missing their education.
And of course the trapped miners themselves, who stayed hopeful and focussed right to the end. Who organised themselves into teams to manage their end of the rescue, who kept a daily routine that went a long way to keeping them sane, and who didn't give up and sit in a hole gibbering while waiting for other people to fix it for them. And who coped even with the infinitely long wait from when the forst man disappeared up the pipe to when the last man stepped into the pod.
Now, isn't that way better than a miracle? :bounce:
It does make a nice change for the news to be reporting something good for a change. They did right to sensationalise it I think. It was pretty sensational.
