individuals who will go down there? well, it s two individuals that go down there. it s a paramedic who s here from chile who s an expert and in the emergency situation that might be happening on the ground that they don t know about. and an expert line rescuer trained for these types of incidents. not this type of incident where someone is down there for seven weeks. in the incident someone gets stuck. here in chile, they have a lot of experience with miners getting stuck. they have a lot of accidents in this country. once they re down there, they ll evaluate. they ll send the men up one-by-one. had to be one-by-one. that s the only way to do that. in the last five hours, this is an interesting point. the men have been put on a liquid-only diet. the reason they ve done that is because they re afraid they re not scared but they think that the cylinder will twist and turn as it goes up like a scary amusement park ride and feel that some of the men might get nauseous and they don t w
way right now. that certainly jack cafferty is here. he s here. he has the coverage. jack? with the midterm elections just three weeks away now, some democrats are running scared, and running away from their own president. congressman bill owens who won a special house seat in a conservative upstate new york district last year is out with a new ad declaring that he votes, quote, with the republican leader 63% of the time. a democrat bragging about how he voted with the republicans. and he s not the only one. other vulnerable democrats have been proposing their votes against some of president obama s signature pieces of legislation. things like health care reform and stimulus bill. one campaign ad goes so far as to show the candidate shooting a bullet through the cap in trade legislation. another uses an ad to out the his support of president bush s medicare plan. president bush s. the democrats claim this is all good, really.
for the children of the miners who have been here for many weeks. they are playing soccer right now in front of the little red schoolhouse, and here is a sign of many celebrations of miners lives and this one says that god is all places at the same time, and we love you. that is one of the miners underground. across the way, another celebration has enbe built. these are flags, and 33 flags in front, and 32 from chile and one from bolivia where the miners are from. the mood is one of excitement, and everybody is so upbeat. the family members and everybody here hope there is excitement and happy a couple of days from now. and we are excited as well. within the next few moments the process will begin, and those 33 miners, one by one, will begin the half-mile journey to the top. our continuing coverage of the breaking news will resume right after this.
this mine. dr. michael duncan of nasa, he s the deputy chief medical officer who went down to chile to help out with the process. appreciate it very, very much. by the way, you re looking at the live pictures and you can see the forklift. you can see they re getting ready to open up the process. we expect within the next few minutes for that capsule to go down with two individuals one at a time and begin the process begin the process of bringing these 33 men up to the top of this mine. our live coverage of the breaking news from chile will continue right after this. what s this option? that s new.
there is copper mine, and there are gold and copper in these mines here and they have been mining for generations. not this many people here since this occurred and now it is a small city. they call it camp esperanza which is the spanish word for hope, and they have a lot of hope that the 33 miners would survive, and indeed, they are all alive and well. the plan is starting within the next couple of hours most likely the first of 33 miners will be pulled up in the cylinder which is called the phoenix, as in the bird that rose through the ashes. it will travel about one mile per hour. the idea at this point is for it to get from the bottom 2300 feet to top in 16 minute, and to give you an idea, it is more than twice the size of the empire state building. it is a long way, and it could be a perilous journey for the psyche of the mental health of the miners coming up, because they have been with their colleagues now for seven weeks underground, and had their support and they will start to