World

Chile choreographs dramatic finish to rescue saga

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-10-13 06:56

Chilean medical doctor Jean Romagnoli shows journalists a device that will be used to monitor the vital signs of the trapped miners as they are lifted individually to the surface in a capsule, at the San Jose mine in Copiapo Oct 11, 2010. [Photo/Agencies]

"We learned something in medicine, that our job is to provide benefit and not harm," Manalich said. "We have to protect them until the last minute, until they can return to normal lives with their families."

Psychiatrists and other experts in surviving extreme situations predict their lives will be anything but normal, and that both the miners and their families have been forever changed by this experience.

Since Aug 22, when a narrow bore hole broke through to their refuge and the miners stunned the world with a note, scrawled in red pen, that announced their survival, these families' lives have been exposed in ways they never imagined. Miners had to describe their physical and mental health in minute detail with teams of doctors and psychologists. And in some cases, when both wives and lovers claimed the same man, everyone involved had to face the consequences.

By the time of the rescue, nerves were beyond frayed outside the mine in "Camp Hope," where miners' families and reporters from all over the world slept side by side in tents and campers, enduring the baking days and frigid nights of the desolate Atacama desert.

"Here the tension is higher than down below. Down there they are calm," said Veronica Ticona, sister of 29-year-old Ariel Ticona, a trapped rubble-removal machine operator.

Alberto Iturra, chief of the psychology team, told the families to go home, get some rest, and prepare to reunite in several days.

"I explained to the families that the only way one can receive someone is to first be home to open the door," Iturra said.