THREE OF Chile’s rescued miners were due to be released from hospital yesterday with doctors saying all 33 men are in remarkably good shape considering their ordeal.
Florencio Ávalos, the first to be rescued, Claudio Yañez and Edison Peña will now be fully exposed to their new fame after one in five of the world’s population is estimated to have watched their rescue on Wednesday after 10 weeks trapped underground.
Their colleagues are expected to be released over the next five days with most due out today. The eldest of the group, Mario Gomez, is being treated for pneumonia and is expected to be the last to leave hospital.
The men are being looked after at the modest San José del Carmen hospital in the regional capital of Copiapó, a tidy oasis town here in the Atacama Desert which is decked out in Chilean flags and messages in support of the men.
After weeks in grim conditions underground the group can now get ready to take up offers of holidays in the Greek islands and South Korea, during which they could spend some of the €7,500 each a Chilean mining magnate has donated to each man.
A local video-game maker is already transforming their experience into a new game and publishers are said to be eager to bid for the diary kept by the group’s chronicler, Victor Segovia, though how much he will divulge is unclear. Even before the rescue started, the miners said they had formed a pact and that all disagreements in the mine would remain between them.
Most of those released from hospital in time are expected to return to the San José mine with family members and rescuers for a Mass of thanksgiving on Sunday. Yesterday Camp Hope, where families had maintained a 10-week vigil while waiting for their loved ones to be rescued, was being dismantled.
The area around the rescue shaft, the focus of weeks of intense activity, was silent as rescue crews took a well-earned day off ahead of removing the drills and cranes that cut down through over half a kilometre of rock and then winched the men to the surface in a steel capsule.
Nearly all of the family members have left, the focus of their vigil now the hospital in Copiapó. But the mother of Pedro Cortez, the third last of the men to be rescued, had come back to gather some personal effects from the family’s own area in the camp.
Sipping a coffee in the tented canteen authorities set up for relatives, she said she was exhausted but relieved that the ordeal was finally over.
“Now we are just waiting for them to get out of hospital and then we can start a new life because that is what it feels like – a new life.”