Jonathan Franklin, Author of 33 Men, Describes Life Underground For the Trapped Chilean Miners

When the story of the 33 Chilean miners trapped underground broke last summer, it resonated with Imus, and not just because the stranded men requested drugs and blow-up dolls to be sent down while they awaited rescue.
 
“I worked in a copper mine in Arizona a mile underground,” Imus said today, speaking with Jonathan Franklin, author of 33 Men: Inside the Miraculous Survival and Dramatic Rescue of the Chilean Miners. “I was never trapped, but I related.”
 
As a reporter based out of Chile for 15 years, Franklin gained access to these 33 men in part because he knew how to act like a local. “It wasn’t like I was parachuting in from Arizona or New York,” he said. Early on, he was give a rescue pass, meaning he was offered a front row seats to events unfolding at the Copiapo mine, instead of being locked behind police barriers with scores of other reporters.   
 
The first 17 days of their isolation were doubtless the most difficult for the miners, Franklin reported. Having spoken with 30 of the 33, Franklin’s goal in his book was to recreate for the reader those initial 17 days, before anyone above ground had made contact with the men down below.
 
“Most people can’t survive an hour underground,” Franklin said. “It’s 90 degrees, 95 percent humidity. This mountain was so dangerous: it was cracking, rocks were falling, even on good days. The mine owners only cared about profits, and had no concerns for safety.”
 
The most interesting part of this story, in Franklin’s view, is the underground society the miners invented. “It was so humid and wet that they actually used an engine block as a clothes dryer,” he said. “They needed hot water, they used the exhaust pipe to boil water. They took out the lights from the vehicles and strung them up like Christmas lights to create a sense of day and night. They turned a dark, totally uninhabitable world into the semblance of a very primitive, but somewhat civilized, society.”
 
After spending hours talking with the miners, their families, Franklin was struck by how bonded these men are to one another. “They would be willing to die for each other, no problem,” he said. Now out of the spotlight, the men are more confused than ever. “One of the miners said to me, ‘If you took a poll, half of us would go back down there and prefer to live underground.’”
 
According to one of the wives, marijuana and amphetamines were both smuggled down a tube the width of an orange to the men below. Once they felt stronger, the men requested women, in the form of blow-up dolls, be sent down as well, and though Franklin said an underground “shagging space” was created, the dolls were never provided.
 
“The miners’ wives went crazy,” Franklin said. “They were completely jealous of the rubber girls.”
 
With their medical disability set to end, many of the miners will soon go back to work. 33 Men paints a haunting picture of the time they spent trapped down below, and Franklin hopes his book strikes a chord with most readers like it did with Imus.
 
“Now, when I see an iPad or a nice shiny car, I have this flashback—where’s the poor miner who brought this to us?” Franklin said.
 
It’s possible he’s hosting a nationally syndicated radio and television show.
 
-Julie Kanfer