In Chilean mine, the 'happy ending' begins

AMERICANS SAT transfixed by their television sets last night - glued to images from a dark and isolated place on the other side of the planet and hoping for that rarest of payoffs in these troubled times: a happy ending.

Horns blared at precisely 11:11 p.m. Eastern time as Florencio Avalos, 31, a shy, married father of two, who was the main videographer of the trapped Chilean miners, emerged from the red, white and blue rescue capsule and embraced his wife and son - signaling the beginning of the end of the long drama at the San Jose Mine.

Almost exactly an hour later,Mario Sepulveda Espina, 40, became the second miner to emerge from underground.

The amazing survival of 33 gold and copper miners trapped more than 2,000 feet under the earth for the past 69 days had captivated viewers all over the world.

The first rescue worker climbed into the narrow, 13-foot-tall, red-white-and-blue capsule known as "The Phoenix II" about 10:20 p.m. to begin the laborious task of finally pulling the men out.

It could take as long as two days for the entire rescue process - with the long journey to the surface expected to take about an hour for each miner.

But the slow-moving process did little to dampen what was clearly a celebratory mood in Chile. In the closest town of Copiapo, where TV cameras showed thousands crowding the streets, cheers and car horns erupted at news that the rescue capsule had been lowered for testing at about 8 p.m.

The president of Chile, Sebastian Pinera - who has been a dynamic presence throughout the miners' ordeal - and the relatives of the workers, who've mostly lived for the last two months at the base named Camp Hope, were on hand to watch the operation.

"We made a promise to never surrender, and we kept it," Pinera said as he waited to greet the miners, whose endurance and unity captivated the world as Chile meticulously prepared their rescue.

Never before in the history of mining have so many workers been successfully rescued after being trapped so deep underground for so long. It took 17 days after the Aug. 5 collapse of the mine before rescue workers learned that the miners were still alive, when the huddled men were able to attach a note to an exploratory drill bit written in red pen reading: "The 33 of us are fine in the shelter."

Interest in the miners and their saga has grown exponentially since the discovery that they had survived the collapse of 700,000 tons of earth, as viewers latched onto a feel-good story in an otherwise dyspeptic era of economic depression and global conflict. Nevertheless, experts warned that the anticipated rescue was just the beginning of what might be a long and sometimes difficult odyssey for the men.

"It's a long journey - it's going to start when they come out of the hole and it's going to go on for months," Albert Holland, the psychologist for NASA, told CNN last night. He said the rescued miners would need to adjust, first, to their sudden burst of fame, and then return to the routine and rhythms of life on the surface.

In some cases, wives and lovers claimed the same man, awkward issues that will now have to be resolved.

Chile had taken extensive precautions to ensure the miners' privacy, using a screen to block the top of the shaft from more than 1,000 journalists at the scene.

The miners were to be ushered through an inflatable tunnel, like those used in sports stadiums, to an ambulance for a trip of several hundred yards to a triage station for an immediate medical check. The plan called for them to gather with a few family members, in an area also closed to the media, before being transported by helicopter to a hospital.

The worst technical problem that could happen, rescue coordinator Andre Sougarett told the Associated Press, is that "a rock could fall," potentially jamming the capsule partway up the shaft. But test rides suggest that the ride up will be smooth.

Panic attacks were the rescuers' biggest concern. The miners were not to be sedated - they need to be alert in case something goes wrong. If a miner must get out more quickly, rescuers would accelerate the capsule to a maximum three meters per second, Health Minister Jaime Manalich said.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.