General Admission
Noynoy learns a lesson from rescue of Chile’s miners
By Al S. Mendoza
RESCUED.
That’s the word. No more, no less.
How else can we best describe the result of the rescue operation of 33 trapped miners in Chile?
No one died in the effort.
Even the six rescuers were brought back to the earth’s surface safe and sound.
Dramatic.
Gripping.
Sensational.
The world had watched it live, thanks to the media.
Who said we the media are the enemy of rescue operations?
Gosh, only when an operation is botched, is failed, that the authorities start to put the blame on us.
Media workers of the world, unite!
Down with the blame-blokes, who love shooting the messengers for every failure of their own making.
Without the media, who would have known about the brilliant work Chile had done for mankind?
From barely 20 journalists from four countries or so covering the miners’ rescue operation at the start, the number ballooned to about 2,000 journalists from nearly 300 countries in the “last two minutes.”
When almost everybody thought it couldn’t be done, Chile did it.
Fighting spirit.
A lot of guts.
Teamwork.
Those were the key words to the smashingly successful operation that started on August 22, 17 days after the 33 miners were trapped some 700 meters underground when a cold and gold mine collapsed in San Jose, Chile, on August 5.
After 69 days – 70 days for the last five or so miners trapped – all 33 were brought back to the “light of life.”
They all wore shades on October 14 to shield their eyes from the piercing light of sun and klieg lights upon their exit from Phoenix 2, their $22-million capsule from the depths in their circuitous, if not improbable, ride to freedom.
Their captivity 2,000 feet below in the company of dusts and strewn rocks had been spent virtually in darkness.
The youngest was 19, the oldest 63.
One became a father 40 days into their “grave,” and his wife named the baby, aptly, Esperanza, which means hope in Spanish, Chile’s national tongue.
Perhaps, the miners might not have welded together in their darkest hours without their leader, Luis “Don Lucho” Urzua, 54.
His leadership was so profound, so compellingly efficient and extraordinary that if I were President Pinera of Chile, I would recruit The Foreman into my Cabinet.
You keep your head, successfully wield power under the most trying of conditions – at times, his men had to eat only once in 48 hours to conserve what was left of their food supplies – Urzua’s kind of leadership is the kind that seemed to dwarf the style of practically all of Noynoy’s men.
No Nobel Prize award of any kind might not be even able to approximate Don Lucho’s achievement.
“This is a lesson that should inspire the world,” said Obama.
All the time that the rescue operation was on, President Pinera of Chile was there.
Sadly, all the time that the rescue operation was on during that lamented Luneta hostage-crisis tragedy, President Noynoy wasn’t there.
To Pinera belonged the world’s admiration. Respect.
Rescued is now also the first name of Pinera.
And Aquino?
Repent.
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