**UPDATE**
Take a look at LIVE footage of each of the miners being rescued. The miners have been trapped underground for more than two months. Efforts to surface them will take place on an individual basis using a specially built cage.
———————————————————————
The miners emerged like clockwork, jubilantly embracing wives, children and rescuers and looking remarkably composed Wednesday after languishing for 69 days in the depths of a mine that easily could have been their tomb.
The anxiety that had accompanied the final few days of preparation melted away at 12:11 a.m. when the stoutest of the 33 miners, Florencio Avalos, emerged from the missile-like rescue capsule smiling broadly after his half-mile journey to the surface.
[pagebreak]
In a din of cheers, he hugged his sobbing 7-year-old son and wife and then President Sebastian Pinera, who has been deeply involved in an effort that had become a matter of national pride.
The most ebullient of the bunch came out second, an hour later.
‘I think I had extraordinary luck. I was with God and with the devil. And I reached out for God,’ said Mario Sepulveda as he awaited the air force helicopter ride to a nearby hospital where all miners were to spend 48 hours under medical observation.
The miners have survived more time trapped underground than anyone on record.
Chile exploded in joy and relief at the news of the first, breakthrough rescue just after midnight in the coastal Atacama desert.
[pagebreak]
In the capital, Santiago, a cacophony of motorists’ horns sounded. In the nearby regional capital of Copiapo, from which 24 of the miners hail, the mayor canceled school so parents and children could ‘watch the rescue in the warmth of the home.’
The methodical pace at which the miners were being delivered from the mountain of their incarceration kept with the rescue team’s prediction it would have them all in about 36 hours, barring major glitches.
After the fifth miner, the rescuers paused to lubricate the spring-loaded wheels that give the 13-foot-tall capsule a smooth ride through the hard-rock shaft. Then they brought up the sixth and seventh.
As dawn broke over the rock-strewn moonscape, eight men had been pulled from the mine in a little over seven hours, putting the rescue on track to end before the sun comes up Thursday.
The entire rescue operation was meticulously choreographed, with no expense spared in bringing in topflight drillers and equipment — and
