Chile Mine Rescue: Much to Celebrate
Ray Walser /
The successful rescue of 33 Chilean miners trapped for 69 days has produced an outpouring of joy and triumph around the world. A well-deserved round of kudos goes to the miners themselves for maintaining their discipline and faith and to the engineers, scientists, and Chilean government officials who made the daring operation work.
A share of the credit also belongs to Chile’s conservative President Sebastian Piñera, whose capacity for crisis management was proven by the nation’s impressive recovery from the February 27 earthquake. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Observers say some of the innovation and management reflects Mr. Piñera’s background as a billionaire entrepreneur who ran a successful airline. Mr. Piñera made such a big bet on getting the miners out that a political scientist dubbed him “the 34th miner”—suggesting his own fate was linked to that of the men below.