Rescuing Chilean miners an unprecedented challenge

THE effort to save 33 men trapped deep in a Chilean mine was an unprecedented challenge, experts said yesterday.

It means months of drilling, then a harrowing three-hour trip in a cage up a narrow hole carved through solid rock.

If all of that is successful, the freed men will emerge from the earth and “feel born again”, said an American miner who was part of a group dramatically rescued in 2002 with similar techniques. But that rescue pulled men from a spot only one-tenth as deep.