The Trapped Chile Miners

The recent event that concerned by the whole world is the story of the Chile Miners. After two months, nine days, and eight hours of their ordeal, the last of thirty-three miners trapped in a hole under half mile in San José mine, Chile, were finally rescued on October 15, 2010.
San José mine is a copper-gold mine near the northern city of Copiapó, Chile. The tragedy happened on August 5, 2010, thirty-three miners were trapped in a collapsed mine shaft about a half mile below the surface. For seventeen 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 the rescue drill reached the place where they were, they sent a message up to the surface, telling the whole world that all of them were still alive. The miners were pulled up one-by-one by the Phoenix, a 28-inch-wide escape capsule painted with Chile’s red, white and blue colors. The Phoenix means the name of the mythical bird that rises from ashes. When the first miner returned to the surface, not only the Chileans were cheers for the rescue, but the whole world expressed their joys for the exciting moment.
As they all went back to the surface save and sound, no one would have expected the series of controversial issues that would come afterward. The first one is the conflicts between their wives and their mistresses. The government had to deal with a rush of women coming forward to claim to be first in the Chilean miners’ affection in order to receive the handout from the government. At least five wives have been forced to come face to face with mistresses who kept from them by their husbands. Next, when they had been asked questions about the situations underground, all miners were remained silent because they had made an agreement about selling these stories to make profits, whether making these stories into movies or publishing in the books. For my opinion, I think the situations of their silence and the conflict of their wives and mistresses somehow show the greed and unfaithful of human beings. Moreover, the event of Chilean miners makes an echo of the problems of mineral in China. According the official statistics, there were almost 3,000 miners died from the accidents underground in China. Compared with Chile government, I think China should pay more attentions and concerns about their miners.
Through the problems caused by this incident, I think the government really needs to focus on these social problems and everyone should learn their lessons by the series of events above. After all, I would say, there are still many difficulties in our lives like “the ordeal” we need to overcome and to deal with.

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2010/chile.miners/index.html

Written by William (473)