Chile: Trapped Miners Get Brad Pitt, Censored News

"With earphones, if they're listening to music and someone calls them, asking for help or to warn them about something, they're not available," Iturra said. "What they need is to be together."

Alejandro Pino, of the Chilean Security Association, ACHS, puts some foods into a tube to be sent to...

Alejandro Pino, of the Chilean Security Association, ACHS, puts some foods into a tube to be sent to trapped miners while showing the operation to the press outside the San Jose mine in Copiapo, Chile, Friday, Sept. 24, 2010. Thirty-three miners have been trapped deep underground in the copper and gold mine since it collapsed on Aug. 5. (AP Photo/Aliosha Marquez)

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Togetherness is what initially saved the miners when an estimated 700,000 tons of rock collapsed Aug. 5 and sealed off the central section of the mine shaft above them, plunging them into darkness and kicking up thick clouds of dust that made it impossible to see, even with their headlamps.

The collapse happened just as the men were gathered for lunch in the refuge — a space about 12 feet by 12 feet (four meters by four meters) with a fortified ceiling nearly 15 feet (4.5 meters) high that normally doubles as a dining room in the lower reaches of the mine. Any sooner or later, and some of the miners probably would have been crushed.

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When the dust finally settled about five days later, they could see they were trapped in a large open space, about 1,200 feet (360 meters) long, that runs up the corkscrew-shaped shaft to another workshop about 2,000 feet (600 meters) underground. The space had several mining vehicles with battery and engine power, a chemical toilet and industrial water, which together with their meager emergency food supply enabled them to survive with no help from the outside world.

"They were 17 days in the darkness — 17 days during which in the first five days they could barely breathe from the dust," Iturra said. "And then they had to say, 'I didn't die' — this in itself stops you from being frightened."

Since Aug. 22, when a bore hole reached the miners, their rescue and support team has grown to more than 300. It includes communications experts, doctors, psychologists, launderers and cooks in addition to the drilling engineers, in what has become a small village in the middle of an Atacama desert. The crews work in teams and shifts to provide everything necessary for the miners' survival until they can be pulled out.

Iturra said the miners have taken it upon themselves to solve their problems as miners do — through hard work.

Divided into three groups of 11, they sleep on cots in three separate parts of the mine, work in three shifts and share lunch at noon to maintain unity.