From the drill site they could see the abandoned offices of the mine, a pair of simple wooden shacks that like a ghost town captured a moment of instant abandonment—drawers open, files on the desk. In the days since the accident, the floor filled with the desert dust and the open wooden window shutters flapped lazily when the wind kicked up—which wasn’t often enough for Hurtado and his crew, who toiled in a broiling desert sun. The brisk wind came at night, when the sky was aglow with stars and the temperature dropped below freezing. At dawn, a tongue of thick fog lapped up the valley, drawn from the Pacific Ocean; it added another penetrating layer of cold. No one complained. Weather was the least of their worries as they angled a drill bit toward their target, 2,300 feet below. The drilling team ran a twenty-four-hour operation that stopped only for maintenance at 8 am and 8 pm, to add oil and check hydraulic fluid. Theirs was one of nine operations to drill nine separate boreholes toward the trapped miners, all coordinated by André Sougarret.
