LEADING THE RESCUE OF THE MINERS IN CHILE

LDP 604: PROJECT PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT

SIMBA, LORENA EVON ACHIENG

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UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI
1

INTRODUCTION

On August 5, 2010 disaster struck in the troubled San Jos copper and gold mine
in Chiles Atacama Desert, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) north of the countrys capital,
Santiago. Thirty-three miners who had been drilling at 700 meters (2,300 feet) below the earths
surface, were entombed by a massive cave-in.
Sixty-nine days later, standing by the mine, the rescue team - along with millions of
television viewers worldwide - watched as the cave-in victims emerged unscathed. A rescue crew

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had worked literally around the clock for more than two months to retrieve the 33 miners. The
decisions made by the hand-picked rescue team during the length of the crisis contain instructive
implications for all who face catastrophic risks or disasters. The search and rescue operations
carried out in Chile offer great lessons in crisis management, leadership and project management
as discussed in the chapters that follow.
1.1

Background

On Aug. 5, 2010, a gold and copper mine near the northern city of Copiap, Chile caved
in, trapping 33 miners in a chamber about 700 meters below the surface. For 17 days, there was
no word on their fate. As the days passed, Chileans grew increasingly skeptical that any of the
miners had survived let alone all of them. But when a small bore hole reached the miners
refuge, they sent up a message telling rescuers they were still alive.
A video camera threaded deep underground captured the first images of the miners, all
apparently in good health. The discovery sparked jubilant celebrations nationwide as rescue
efforts energized the country.
The trapped miners initially tried to escape through a ventilation shaft system, but they
discovered that the ladders, though required by safety codes, were missing. The company had
been required to install them as a condition for restarting operations after the shutdown between
2007 and 2008 but had simply not done so.
The miners opened access to 2 kilometers of galleries, enough for exercising. They also
created water supplies by digging underground water sources with backhoes and by draining the
radiators of nearby vehicles. They preserved their meager food supplyintended to last just two
or three daysby painfully stretching it out for two weeks. Each received 2 small spoonfuls of
tuna, a sip of milk, a morsel of a peach, and a biscuit every 48 hours.

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When the miners were located the next challenge was supporting them until they could be
extracted. The rescue crews used the tiny bore hole to thread down tubes containing sugars,
water and liquid nutrients to help sustain the miners, while continuing the painstaking work of
drilling another tunnel without causing another collapse. The thin shaft became an umbilical cord
to keep the miners alive, from which they could receive information about the rescue efforts and
communications from family members.
On Oct. 9, 2010, two excruciating months later, a more sizable drill finally broke through
to the miners. It created space for a rescue shaft through which the miners were raised, one by
one, in a capsule especially designed to contain a human being. As the vast team of rescue
workers, medical personnel, technicians and mining experts entered the final phase of the rescue,
the colorful scene reflected the huge scale of the operation that captured the attention of the
world: over a million television viewers, together with anxious and elated family members of the
miners, gathered to witness the rescue.
The mine, known as San Jos, has had a history of accidents and was forced to shut down
briefly to make safety improvements, but its owners did not carry them out.

1.2

Chiles Mining Accident Time Line of Events

Aug 5, 2010 A cave-in leaves 33 miners trapped nearly half a mile underground in a
small copper and-gold mine near the Chilean city of Copiap, 800 kilometers north of Santiago.
Aug 6, 2010 Chile's mining minister Laurence Golborne cuts short a visit to Ecuador
and flies back to lead the rescue effort. Rescuers begin descending through a ventilation shaft.

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Aug 7, 2010 Rescue workers are forced to abandon that route following a fresh
collapse. President Sebastian Pinera cuts short a visit to Colombia and travels to Copiap, where
the mine is located, to meet with officials.
Aug 8, 2010 Rescue workers begin drilling 5-inch wide bore-holes as they try to locate
the missing miners.
Aug 11, 2010 President Pinera sacks the head of the National Service of Geology and
Mining, Sernageomin and vows to improve safety.
Aug 19, 2010 A drill reaches the level of the mine where the miners were believed to
be, but does not hit the shelter or encounter any signs of the miners.
Aug 22, 2010 Rescue workers hear tapping on the drill at a depth of 688 meters. When
the drill is pulled out, there is a note attached. It reads "Estamos bien en el refugio, los 33" "We
are fine in the shelter, the 33 of us." The miners have access to about 1km of tunnel and have
split into three groups to eat and sleep.
Aug 23, 2010 Food, water and medicine are lowered along with rehydration tablets and
high-energy glucose gel. It takes an hour to get supplies down.
Aug 25, 2010 Chilean authorities seek advice from NASA on how to keep the miners
mentally and physically fit during the months it might take to rescue them.
Aug 27, 2010 Video footage in which the miners give a tour of their cave is shown to
relatives who have gathered at Camp Hope near the mouth of the mine. The miners, shirtless and
with scraggly beards show how they pass the time playing dominoes and praying.
Aug 30, 2010 First attempt to drill a hole to rescue the men, Plan A, begins.
Sept 2, 2010 Drilling is suspended for several hours because of geological faults and
engineers suggest a rescue within four months could be optimistic.

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Sept 5, 2010 Plan B drilling begins.

Sept 8, 2010 The miners enjoy watching a football game between Chile and Ukraine on
a miniature projector which has been dropped down a narrow bore hole.
Sept 13, 2010 After much debate above ground the miners begin receiving cigarettes.
Sept 19, 2010 Plan C drilling begins
Sept 24, 2010 The miners mark 50 days trapped underground.
Sept 25, 2010 The first of three rescue capsules, named Phoenix, arrives at the mine.
The 420kg cage, painted in the colors of the Chilean flag, is 21 inches wide and contains tanks of
air, a microphone for communications, and equipment to monitor the miner's heart rate.
Oct 4, 2010 President Pinera announces the rescue is almost complete and he hopes to
have the men out before Oct 15, 2010.
Oct 9, 2010 Jubilation above and below ground as the rescue shaft reaches the miners.
As the tip of the drill breaks through one miner shouts: "We can see the nose. It's through, it's
through!"
Oct 11, 2010 The rescue capsule is tested to ensure that it can pass up and down the
newly completed shaft.
Oct 12, 2010 Rescue begins at 7:00pm.
Oct 13, 2010 At 8:55pm, Urza, the crew foreman and the last of the 33 miners is
brought to the surface.
1.3

Rescue Drilling Plans

Golborne and his rescue team reviewed a host of equipment needs and strategies for reaching the
miners to prepare for the possibility of a rescue. They grouped them into distinct approaches,
labeled Plan A through Plan J. The plans were informed based on the drilling information

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acquired from the initial boreholes. Three schemes emerged as favorites, each with different
equipment. President Piera sanctioned all three despite the increased costs to hedge against any
one failing.

Plan A: Drill straight down at an angle of 90 degrees. It reached 598 out of 702

meters.
Plan B: Drill at an angle of 82 degrees. It reached the trapped miners at 624 meters on

Oct. 9, 2010.
Plan C: Drill at an angle of 85 degrees. It reached 372 out of 597 meters.
1.4

Rescue Team Inner Circle

Laurence Golborne, Chiles Mining Minister at the time, took overall responsibility of the
search and rescue mission. He created and led a team to solve specific issues in the crisis and
chose among the options for ending the crisis.
Sebastian Piera, Chiles President at the time, provided consistent support to Golborne
and closely supervised the rescue efforts. He insisted on searching the miners at all cost.
Luis Urza, the mines shift foreman, gathered the men in a secure refuge, then organized
them and their scanty resources to cope with a long-term survival situation (the first 17 days). He
helped them to ration food, preserve morale and prepare for rescue. He directed the underground
aspects of the rescue operation.
Andr Sougarret, the engineer appointed by Codelco to head the technical aspects of the
rescue. He oversaw the engineering team at the site.
Ren Aguilar, the Safety Director and Golbornes deputy, managed relations with the
miners relatives and the many subcontractors.
Cristin Barra, Cabinet Chief for the Interior Ministry managed the rescue teams
relations with the national government.

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2

7
LESSONS LEARNT FROM THE CHILE MINERS RESCUE
2.1

Leadership

The successful rescue of the miners can be attributed to the technical prowess of the
rescue effort. However, leadership also played a huge part both above and below ground.
Multiple leaders including Urzua, Golborne, President Piera, Sougarret, among
others, emerged and giving each other space and responsibility to take on different tasks.
Below are some of the lessons learnt in leadership.
2.1.1

Direct a Realistic Assessment and Enable Hope

To thrive in chaotic environments, teams need realism and hope.

Leaders must promote both, by understanding what is and by envisioning

what could beand by inviting others to participate in moving from the
existing to the desirable.
Coming to terms with reality starts with conducting an unbiased
assessment of the current situation and trying to anticipate any future
consequences. But the gap between the present circumstance and the
desired outcome can be psychologically overwhelming. Therefore it is critical
for leaders to inspire hope in followers.
During the rescue, Chiles political leaders raised peoples hopes and,
at

the

same

time,

injected

realism.

Against

key

political

advisers

recommendations and at significant political risk, President Piera flew to the

mine site to meet a small group of family members and declare his
unequivocal commitment to a rescue. His directive was clear: Bring home the

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miners, dead or alive, sparing no expense. President Piera thus voiced the
gap between reality and hope, and made a pledge to close it.
Meanwhile, deep underground, the trapped miners confronted the
physical and psychological challenges of survival. Under the calming
influence of the crew foreman, Luis Urza, they overcame confusion and
conflict to restore order and hope. Threatened by limited food and
deteriorating health, the miners adopted a democratic leadership structure.
They allocated daily tasks and resources, established living and waste
disposal areas, and used the lighting system to simulate day and night. In
their grim situation, hope focused on the possibility of rescue and on
maintaining their dignity even if rescue eventually proved impossible.
2.1.2

Building a Top Team for Crisis Leadership

During times of uncertainty, leaders must recruit a diverse team of

highly skilled people. The team needs to explore, experiment, and invent
together, and to integrate deep knowledge and ideas. The people have to
work in fluid, shifting arrangements, rotating in and out of teams as the
demands of the situation evolve. President Piera appointed Nelson Pizarro, a
highly respected mining expert, and Sougarret, an engineer at Codelco to
head the technical aspects of the rescue, with Golborne in charge of the
overall rescue.
The leaders must repeatedly present their vision of the end state. Even
when the mission appears obvious, they must remind people what theyre
trying to accomplish and whats at stake; doing so infuses fresh meaning into

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work and recharges effort and ingenuity. Sougarret, Aguilar, and Golborne,
worked hard to inspire the technical team as it coped with frequent failure
and painfully little daily progress. They offered support and regularly
emphasized the missions urgency. Whenever members of the rescue effort
hit roadblocks, the leaders shifted seamlessly to sustaining their involvement
and motivating them. They created a psychologically safe environment,
never blaming anyone and always focusing on the learning generated by
failure.
It is as important to exclude unhelpful people and approaches as it is to
invite in helpful ones. Leaders in chaotic environments must be willing to
draw boundaries and actively turn away people whose efforts appear no
longer relevant. Golborne had to make a decision to remove Fort, the
geologist representing the families from the rescue management team. Fort
would frequently adopt adversarial stance, arguing against Sougarrets
proposed actions meetings.
2.1.3

Direct Execution and Enable Innovation

In ambiguous and dynamic environments, leaders should drive processes

through an unusual mix of disciplined execution and rapid innovation. To
maximize the chances of success, several teams worked independently to
come up with different drilling plans. Though many drilling attempts failed,
they yielded crucial information about the mine and the rock.

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2.2

Crisis Management

As the world watched, the government of Chile showed not only leadership, but
remarkable public relations and communications savvy as it sought to free 33 miners trapped
underground for over two months. Here are some crisis management lessons we can unearth
from the management of the rescue.
1. Take responsibility. In stepping up to take over the rescue operation, President
Piera took an enormous calculated risk by letting the government take charge of the
rescue, amidst the risk of government losing popular support in the event that the
rescue failed or the miners died. It was going to be impossible for him to govern if the
rescue operation fails: he was gambling his presidency on this accident, but
nonetheless he took responsibility and it paid off.
2. Manage expectations. President Piera publicly declared that the miner would be
freed by Christmas. This estimates whether simple caution, or communications
strategy, was a masterstroke. By offering a much more distant date, he anchored
public expectation which took some of the pressure off the government, enabling it to
succeed beyond all hopes, and made it look very proficient in the process.
3. Know Your Task By Understanding the Problem Fully. First thing is to know and
understand the dimensions of the crisis or the disaster. It is only after you fully
understand the problem that correct decisions would be made. In this case, the
enormity of the problem lay in the fact that the miners were trapped at approximately
700 meters, under hard rock. The mine had a history of instability that had led to
previous accidents, including one death. The miners had been trapped on August 05,
2010. The problem was further accentuated when a rescue attempt, on August 07,
2010, through a ventilation shaft failed, as the shaft collapsed, thus, raising doubts

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about the success of rescue operation. To dig another hole would have taken months.
It required specialized drill and a rescue operation and no such equipment was
available. At the end of all this, there was no surety of the survivability of miners due
to shortage of food and water, besides the lack of oxygen. Undoubtedly, it was an
operation with a very high certainty of failure. To come out a winner under such
negative conditions, speaks volume on the competence of the man. Golborne the
rescue team leader, understood the crisis very well and thus could come up with the
right approach to segment the problem into progressive objectives from finding the
status of the miners, whether dead or alive; then, maintaining them and finally,
rescuing them one by one in an orderly fashion.
4. Have a plan. Amidst the jubilation of locating the miners, Golbornes attention was
shifted to the immediate challenge of retrieving the miners. To prepare for the
possibility of a rescue, Golborne and his team reviewed a host of equipment needs
and strategies for reaching the miners. Soon, three schemes dubbed as Plan A, Plan B
and Plan C emerged as favorites. President Piera sanctioned all three options
because failure was not an option.
5. Accept help, but maintain control. A fascinating aspect of this rescue was
the technical help and advice the government sought from private companies and
experts at NASA and elsewhere. The authorities made it clear that no effort would be
spared to ensure a safe resolution to the crisis. Yet, they kept tight control over
communications, ensuring that the government was the chief source of updates.
6. Be transparent. The public relations for the rescue team was proactive, candid,
consistent, and transparent in providing updates to both the family and the media.
Golborne made a point to candidly inform the relatives and the press of the progress
and challenges on site. Also President Pieras handling of the mining catastrophe

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played well with the Chilean public and in fact increased his approval rating. The rise
in public support came despite criticism that his government had been too lax in
regulating mine safety. The leaders never seemed to obscure facts or delay disclosure,
which often happens when the pressure is on.
7. Be visible. Golborne, Chiles Minister of Mining was at the site virtually around the
clock, and President Piera appeared frequently as operations shifted into high gear.
2.3

Project Management

The successful and emotional rescue effort of the Chile miners has reflected on teamwork
and leadership lessons. An examination of the rescue in the context of project management,
considering what went well and what didnt go so well reveals the following lessons:
1

Reconnaissance is key. The rescue team and leaders continuously engaged in

situational assessment before initiating an action. Initially, the rescuers surveyed
alternative entry routes in effort to try to reach the miners and engaged in geological
assessments before beginning bore-hole drilling that kicked off the actual search
process. Later, when the miners were found, the first action was to lower a video
camera, which would enable information gathering prior to action. More often than
not, well-meaning project teams spring to action before they understand the problem

to be solved and the right steps to take.

8. Keep the project goals in focus. The goal of this project was to bring the 33 miners
to the earths surface safely and reunite them with their loved ones. Thus all decisions
were made with the goal in mind. For instance, at the final rescue stage, the rescue
team had to ensure that rock fall in the shaft would not jam the capsule, and they had
to run the capsule and winch through a final set of tests. This process required an
additional 48 hours, which was extremely frustrating for Golborne. However, he

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understood that it was essential for reducing risk and assuring success and therefore
let the technical experts carry on with their tests.
9. Communication across concurrent activities. This rescue was a time-compressed
project in which many activities had to be performed in parallel; drilling, capsule
design, preparation for the rescue, communication with stakeholders and media,
managing the health and well-being of the trapped miners, and preparing for postrescue maters all took place concurrently. Concurrent scheduling is an effective way
of reducing a projects duration, but carries the risks associated with coordination. In
the mine rescue, communication across parallel tasks was easier because nearly
everyone involved was onsite, and physical progress was easily communicated both
visually and through the management meetings held every morning between 9 a.m.
and 9:45 a.m. Awareness of what was happening largely allowed teams on concurrent
tasks to adapt plans and designs as realities changed.
10. Learn from others. It is prudent for project teams to investigate whether or not there
is any history regarding the problem to be tackled before embarking on the project.
This might guide the team on how the project is planned and delivered. The rescue
team recognized that being trapped below the earths surface created the kind of
extreme and confined condition experienced by NASA astronauts and Chilean
Submarine fleets, so they endeavored to learn what they could from both specialists.
11. Experiment in real time. When risks probabilities are high, with huge potential
impact, effective project teams know they must run several contrasting approaches in
parallel to increase the likelihood of success. This is evident in at least two instances.
First, multiple bore-holes were drilled simultaneously when they were first trying to
locate the miners. They didnt drill one test hole at a time, but crashed the schedule by
using multiple pieces of equipment. Second, once the miners were located, they had

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drilling Plans A, B, and C running simultaneously, using different types of equipment.

Backup was essential as the safely and timely evacuation of the trapped miners was
the main priority.
12. Keep key stakeholders in the loop. In the absence of information, stakeholders will
spread rumors much more damaging than any negative information you might be
reluctant to report. The mine rescue leaders opened things up for free-flowing
communication because they were at risk of losing publics confidence. There were
immediate announcements of changes, disappointments, and triumphs as they
emerged. Golborne would first brief the families of the miners then thereafter meet
with the press and this was the standard procedure. Golborne also kept the president
in the loop at all times.
13. Celebrate milestones. This was a strong, positive feature of the project. Each major
event was celebrated with great fanfare and heartfelt joy: finding the miners,
connecting with the miners, the first video links, completion of the rescue boreholes,
and rescue of the miners. It helped that family members located at Campa Esperanza
created much of the celebration themselves. It doesnt appear they felt they had to
wait for officials to authorize celebration, a reminder that milestone recognition
events need not come officially from the top.
14. Learn broadly from the project. Dont forget what caused the project to be
necessary in the first place. There seems to have been serious lapses in San Esteban
Mining Companys (SEMC) responsibility as a corporate. This firm was the owner of
San Jos mines that was over 100years old and had a poor safety record. It had a
history of both physical instability and inadequate safety standards. It was also noted
that there was only enough food in the shelter for two days and that the San Jos mine
did not have its own rescue squad. Rescuing the miners successfully probably

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increased the firms capacity to undertake successful rescue effort in the future.
However, what really matters in this case is being able to avoid the need to rescue.
Crisis response projects should spawn projects directed at avoiding, where possible,
similar crises in the future.
3

CONCLUSION

In the end, the Chilean miners rescue was an operation very well executed and it was
appreciated all over the world. Crisis management requires determined leadership and focused
experts who are competent enough to think out of the box and face the challenge squarely. It also
requires a methodical approach to planning and guiding the operations involved in managing the
crisis from start to finish.
Chile's mine rescue was one of the best-organized jobs we've seen anywhere in the world,
of any type of application. It has set the benchmark for well-managed emergency operations.

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4

REFERENCES

Edgar, J. and Jordan, R. (2011). Leading the Rescue of the Miners in Chile. The Wharton School
of the University Of Pennsylvania and Pontificia Universidad Catlica De Chile