Engineer behind Chilean mine rescue recalls rescue efforts

More than 15 years after 33 Chilean miners emerged alive from more than 2,000 feet underground, engineer Igor Proestakis can vividly remember the moment he watched the first man reach the surface.

Proestakis, who was just 24 when he helped develop what became known as “Plan B,” one of the drilling strategies used in the historic 2010 rescue, said he had spent 39 straight days working with little sleep as engineers raced to create an escape route through hundreds of meters of solid rock. When the first miner emerged, Proestakis broke down.

“All my effort helped to take one guy out,” Proestakis told The Christian Post. “I broke my back. I worked 39 days without stop. I barely slept every night, probably one hour, two hours, a couple minutes sometimes, and everything makes sense when just the first guy went out.”

“I cried like a baby,” he said, recalling that he became so emotional he couldn’t continue watching the rescue on television. “I felt like my job was done.”

The extraordinary effort to save the miners is revisited in National Geographic’s new three-part docuseries, “Chilean Mine Rescue: Race Against Time,” premiering Friday at 8 p.m. EDT on National Geographic and streaming the following day on Disney+ and Hulu. The series features previously unseen footage and interviews with survivors, relatives and rescuers as it recounts the 69-day ordeal.

On Aug. 5, 2010, a collapse at the San José copper and gold mine in northern Chile trapped 33 men deep beneath the Atacama Desert. For more than two weeks, their fate was unknown.

Then, on Aug. 22, rescuers drilling exploratory holes broke through to the area where the men had taken refuge. Attached to the drill was a handwritten message that would become famous around the world: the miners were alive.

The rescue operation required an unprecedented engineering challenge: finding a way to bring 33 men back to the surface through hundreds of meters of rock.

Proestakis recalled how he’d already visited the mine before the miners were found alive, offering technical assistance as crews searched for them. He returned after their discovery and found the site increasingly sober as attention shifted toward figuring out how to get them out.

“I had the chance to talk to the right people about the rescue effort and the technology that was going to be used to this second stage of taking the miners out,” he recalled. “I think that I was in a good spot, you know, having the correct information, a good technical background and a good idea, and talking to the right people.”

Within hours, Proestakis said, he met with one of the engineers overseeing the operation and presented the idea that would become Plan B. However, the technical challenge was daunting. 

“Drilling is not easy,” Proestakis said. “Drilling with air, with compressed air, is not easy.”

To extract a person, rescuers needed a hole roughly 24 to 26 inches in diameter, he said. At the same time, they were drilling through extremely hard rock to depths exceeding 600 meters.

“That is a very big diameter hole to drill,” he said. “We knew that this was very deep.”

Plan B used a Schramm T-130 drilling rig to reach a workshop area near the miners, roughly 620 meters underground. Rescuers had to use an existing borehole as a guide before widening the shaft enough to accommodate a rescue capsule. 

Despite the scale of the challenge, Proestakis said he was convinced from the beginning that the approach could succeed, despite his youth. 

“I knew this from the very first moment when I presented this plan,” he said. “It was very easy for me to understand that this was the way to go because the hardness of the rock and what we were doing, it made perfect sense.”

At 24, however, believing in his calculations was only half the battle. Senior engineers overseeing an operation involving 33 lives also had to be willing to listen to him.

“I think I was brave enough to trust in what I knew at that point and pursue that,” he said. “I was lucky enough to have people on the other end of the table to listen to my idea and understand the benefits of it, and trusted this young guy.”

“We need to trust young people,” Proestakis said. “This is for me, this is the key.”

He stressed that the operation’s success extended far beyond any single engineer or idea. It was, he said, the result of experts bringing their knowledge together toward one objective.

“Chile is a huge mining country, and we had top engineers, top geologists working every day, every night,” he said. “This is what happened when you take the best people from their fields and put them working together. This is what happens. We make huge things.”

While engineers above ground worked around the clock on the technical challenge, faith and prayer became an important part of life for many of the men trapped below. When the 33 trapped miners emerged from underground, at least two dozen of them were wearing T-shirts that proclaimed “Gracias Señor,” or “Thank you, Lord.”

José Henríquez, one of the Christians among the miners, reportedly served as a spiritual leader underground and requested pastoral and spiritual resources for the group. Bible studies, Christian music and sermons were sent underground as the men waited to be rescued.

Other miners publicly described turning to God during the ordeal. Mario Gómez, one of the oldest members of the group, wrote to his wife after rescuers first established contact, “Thanks to God I will come out soon, patience and faith. God is great.”

Mario Sepúlveda later said the miners were “walking hand-in-hand with God,” while Richard Villarroel said he learned to pray underground and grew closer to God. When the miners finally emerged, several knelt, crossed themselves or prayed after reaching the surface.

Faith was also visible above ground, where relatives maintained a vigil at the encampment that became known as Camp Hope, Proestakis recalled. Catholic leaders celebrated mass and prayed with families, and Chilean Bishop Alejandro Goic Karmelic spoke at the time of witnessing the “spirit of faith and trust in God of the miners and their families.”

When the rescue operation finally began Oct. 12 and continued into Oct. 13, Proestakis wasn’t at the mine. Despite weeks spent working on the drilling effort, he said he wasn’t invited to remain at the site and watched the first rescue on television instead, but seeing one miner safely reach the surface was enough.

“I was hoping that all 33 of them were rescued,” he said. “But what I’m trying to say is that everything makes sense. … Just one guy was enough for me.”

More than a decade later, Proestakis spoke with one of the miners at the opening of a museum commemorating the rescue. And today, he hopes the story reminds viewers not only of what engineering can accomplish under extraordinary circumstances, but also what can happen when experienced leaders are willing to listen to younger voices.

“I only did half of my job,” Proestakis said. “The other half was done by a super smart guy that was smart enough to understand that there was a good chance to take them out with the idea of this young guy.”