Sometimes the magic works

Rico says the story could so easily have turned out differently, but the Chileans got all 33 miners out of that mine alive. Kudos to all involved. The AP has the story:

With remarkable speed, and flawless execution, miner after miner climbed into a cramped cage deep beneath the Chilean earth, was hoisted through 2,000 feet of rock and saw precious sunlight Wednesday after the longest underground entrapment in human history.
By midafternoon, 26 of the 33 miners, including the weakest and sickest, had been pulled to freedom, and officials said they might even be able to bring everyone out by midnight.
After 69 days underground, including two weeks during which they were feared dead, the men emerged to the cheers of exuberant Chileans and before the eyes of a transfixed globe. The operation picked up speed as the day went on, but each miner was greeted with the same boisterous applause from rescuers.
"Welcome to life," President Sebastian Pinera told Victor Segvia, the fifteenthth miner out. On a day of superlatives, it seemed no overstatement.
They rejoined a world intensely curious about their ordeal, and certain to offer fame and jobs. Previously unimaginable riches awaited men who had risked their lives going into the unstable gold and copper mine for about $1,600 a month.
The miners made the smooth ascent inside a capsule called Phoenix: thirteen feet tall, barely wider than their shoulders, and painted in the white, blue, and red of the Chilean flag. It had a door that stuck occasionally, and its wheels needed lubricating at least once, but it worked exactly as planned.
Beginning at midnight Tuesday, and sometimes as quickly as every 25 minutes, the pod was lowered the nearly half-mile to where 700,000 tons of rock collapsed on 5 August and entombed the men.