organizing, choosing leaders, deciding on the honor of who would be the last to leave. up above, the race to save them was on and so was the countdown to rescue. in the hour ahead, we're going to take you inside that race, moment by moment, challenges and setbacks, how they were overcome, the mechanical and human ballet that made it all possible. all the elements that led first to miners safe underground and the incredible sight of those men emerging one by one from weeks of darkness. we're going to start at the beginning with tom foreman. >> reporter: august 5, 2:00 in the afternoon, 2,300 feet underground, a shaft collapses in the san jose copper and gold mine. 33 miners are somewhere behind the rubble, their condition unknown. the chilean president promises every effort to rescue them but knew collapses complicate the formidable task. august 12, the miners' families have set up camp on the surface to keep watch on the drilling. a week has passed and an official says there is little chance the men survived. relatives would later say they argued with that assessment from the start. >> translator: i always told the media every time i was asked, i know my husband is fine, i know he's alive, and i know he's keeping up all the others in the mine because that's the kind of person my husband is. >> reporter: franklin's sister lobo never loses faith for a minute. >> translator: i got a call when i was at home and they said frankie is gone. and i said no, he's alive and god is going to get him out of there. >> reporter: so even as authorities hint that the search may need to wind down, the families are sending a clear message, keep looking. >> 33 men have been trapped underground since august 5th. their families prayed they were alive, those prayers have been answered. >> reporter: august 22nd, a stunning breakthrough. an exploratory drill hitting a chamber deep in the earth and comes up with a note attached. all 33 of us are fine in the shelter. >> scenes of joy, tears of happiness on the outside of this mine located in the northern part of chile about 450 miles north of santiago, our country's capital. we said after 17 days, we don't know anything about them. we made contact with the shelter, the shelter was located about 2,250 feet below the surface and when the probe came out with a piece of paper that had a message written on it, it said, we are all right, that we are in the shelter, the 33 of us. >> translator: i'm very proud of my brother because he's strong and that's why he's been able to achieve this, to remain alive for 11 days. >> reporter: rescuers celebrate too knowing that technology and teamwork have produced a near miracle. >> translator: all of you who brought us coffee, who brought us food, who made the logistics of all this possible. this is what brought this about. this country never gave up and we miners, we never will give up. ♪ >> reporter: a phone line is dropped down and rescuers above hear as if from beyond the grave the trapped, exhausted miners singing the national anthem. soon a videocamera is lowered and the first ghostly pictures emerge. [ speaking spanish ] >> reporter: the miners through strict disciplined rationing have survived 17 days on two days' worth of food. now supplies pour down the pipeline while gratitude rises up. hello to my family, my children, my wife, my mom, one man says, before he breaks into tears. thanks so much from all of my heart, another adds in the ghostly darkness. the miners have organized a chain of command, each one has been gavin job. they have times for work, for exercise, for relaxation. the routine has clearly kept spirits up. real soon we'll be out of here yet another assures those above. but real soon runs smack into reality, engineers studying the chamber where the miners are trapped have reached a daunting conclusion, it may take up to four months to bring them out. >> up on this barren hillside, relatives have planted a tag for each of the miners trapped underground. 32 chilean tags. one bolivian flag. as long as it takes, the chilean government is vowing to bring each one of them home alive. >> i want to bring you our karl penhaul who was the first on the scene for us. the first drill that came through and the miners attached a note to it, and we have some pictures of the note, the president of chile held up the note. what did the note say and did the people who were drilling know that they were alive or were they just kind of seeing what would happen? >> reporter: no, they had no knowledge or, in fact, after all this period, 17 days and the difficulties it was sending a probe into the mine, one of the reasons of the difficulties of putting that probe into the mine and locating exactly the refuge area was because the mine map supplied by the mining company was so out of date, they didn't know where the refuge was according to those maps. so really it was sticking a whole series of different probes into that hillside, the proverbial needle in the haystack. so after the 17 days they came up to the refuge, they didn't know if the men were alive. so what the men did is bang, bang, bang on the side of that drill with a spanner to send a vibration up the tube. they painted the tip of the drill red to let them know. and they taped on two notes. the first note written by jose ojeda, he said, we're in the refuge, the 33 of us, we are well. when that got to the surface, that was the most miraculous message to the rescuers on top. they didn't believe that all 33 would have made it. they didn't believe that they would be able to hit the refuge. by that time, they were almost giving up hope. but it was a second note attached to that drill bit by mario gomez to his wife. i remember the words of that. it starts off, dear lil'a, i'm well. thanks to god, we will make it out of here. >> karl, when you first arrived, how organized was it? >> reporter: the families were very organized because they had been there already 17 days standing vigil for these miners, it was really the families that drove the whole initial phase of this rescue operation because they clearly said to the government, they clearly said to the mine company, you will give us back our loved ones dead or alive. if they are dead, you will burrow down and bring their bodies back and if they are alive, you will find them. so they had organized themselves physically into one large group. of course they were living under very rudimentary conditions. people who had the warmth of their own homes in a city have gone up into the middle of the chilean desert and were camping out in the boiling hot days and in the absolutely frigid nights, anderson. >> and for the miners down below, those first 17 days, that's really the most extraordinary of all, because it was completely, they were left up to themselves. they didn't know if anyone was going to be able to find them, they didn't know if anybody knew they were alive or if everybody just assumed they were dead and they really kind of organized themselves. they started rationing food and they really were responsible for their own survival? >> reporter: those 17 days were the most key and the most amazing period from the earliest interviews. we're hearing that the miners have some kind of pact of silence so we're not hearing full details, but the details that i have heard so far from those miners, they had 120 cans of tuna between 33 of them. that meant that they rationed out half a plastic spoonful of tuna per miner a day. they organized themselves into work groups, but even so, they said they couldn't see a hand in front of their faces for those first 17 days, it was so dim. and then the issue of the shift foreman stepping up there, he said in some comments we have from him, that he decided that his only leadership quality would be to tell the truth to these men. at one stage he said, i'm going to tell you straight, we may make it, but it's more than likely we're going to die. although the men appreciated the honesty, but a couple of the men fell to the floor and didn't get up for a couple of days until their colleagues rallied back on the record them. but he told the men that they may make it out of there they may not. so the first 17 days they were aware, if they find us, they find us, if not, not. >> amazing. karl, appreciate all your reporting these long weeks and months. thanks very much. when we come back, the three-way race to drill the shaft into the mine. the one chilling moment when the drillers heard a hard bang down below. >> that's what we didn't want to hear. we still hadn't punched through into the mine. it was definitely a heart-stopper. we're thinking, man, something goes wrong in the last minute. sorry i'm late fellas. [ evan ] ah it's cool. ah... ah. ah. ah. ah. ah. ah. ah. ah. ah! ah! whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what is that? how come my dap wasn't like that? huh? it's just an "us" thing. yeah, it's a little something we do. who else is in this so-called "us"? man, i don't know. there's a lot of us. 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>> we worked real long and hard on that and to actually see that capsule come through the first time through the hole that we drilled is just unbelievable. we're all kind of in disbelief that we're part of it. >> you had more than a part, and your colleagues did as well. you guys were working around the clock. there were three different drills, plan "a," "b" and "c." you were plan "b." you actually started later but you broke through first. i heard you said this is the most difficult drilling project you've worked on. and you just came back from afghanistan. why was this one so tough? >> the geography and the stratosphere is very difficult to drill. it's very abrasive, it's extremely hard, it's got broken parts in it. and so it eats up bits. we had a hard time with the angle, keeping the bushings in the bits and we just had issues. but together as a team, everybody just kind of came together and we made this thing work. and it's an awesome feeling. >> and were you manning the drill when it actually broke through, when it actually reached the miner? >> yes, sir, i was. >> what was that feeling like? i mean did you actually -- could you tell that it had gotten that close? >> you know, we did, we stopped 2 1/2 meters shy, just so we could make sure the miners could actually go down and make sure our depths are correct, they did over the phone tell us it is 2 1/2 meters, so drilling the last couple of meters is obviously nerve-racking. we could still have a failure at that point and lose the hole. so until you're actually in the line, it's not over. so, yeah, we had a very nerve-racking couple of meters there and then in the last six inches, we had something around the rig pop. everybody's asked us about that. we still today don't know what that was. >> i heard you described it that you thought your heart almost stopped? >> well, i tell you, that's exactly what it was, because that was what we didn't want to hear is something like that because we still hadn't punched through into the mine. and so it was definitely a heart stopper, we're thinking, man, something goes wrong in the last minute. but it ended up, we watched the video that the miners had come through for us into the mine and everything worked out well. >> you're a hero not only to the people there, but to all the people that have been watching, you and your colleagues. >> i appreciate that. when we come back, testing the shaft and the rescue pod planning the rescue and choosing an emergency worker to make that first unknown journey deep into the earth, the man who would be the first into the mine and more than a day later, the very last man out. >> good luck. good luck, manuel. imagine you're at the beach. imagine you're at the beach. good luck, my brother. good luck. good luck. what do you say we get the look we want, the softness we need, and an unbeatable lifetime stain warranty for whatever life throws at it. then let's save big on the installation. ♪ we're lowering the cost of going barefoot. more saving. more doing. that's the power of the home depot. get exclusive martha stewart living and platinum plus installed in your whole house for only 37 bucks. such a dramatic moment. rescuer manuel gonzalez being lowered into the escape shaft. it happened at 10:19 p.m. eastern time. he was literally charting the unknown. he was the first of six rescuers who would descend into that darkness. until that moment, the escape capsule had been tested unmanned and the tests had gone well. but there are no guarantees in any rescue operation. especially one on this scale. as gonzalez and the capsule vanished from sight, the world waited with fingers crossed and what we saw minutes later was truly extraordinary. here's gary tuchman. >> reporter: 68 days after the collapse of the san jose mine, the beginning of the end of the saga is now clearly in sight. the world gasps in disbelieve that the images more than 2,000 feet undergrounds. it's the first time anyone outside the immediate rescue team has seen live video of the miners. there are cheers and hugs for the first rescuer, manuel gonzalez. he is the first person to have physical contact with the miners since august. the men appear in good shape, most of them in their underwear and shirtless in the 80-degree heat of the mine. 31-year-old florencio avalos switches places with gonzalez. up above, an anxious quiet falls over the rescue workers and families. there's also now a nervous silence among the 32 miners still underground. >> we have been told this should take about 15 to 17 minutes for him to be brought up. but the wheel seems to be moving quicker than the wheel when they went down to get the miners. what's amazing, anderson, is this, this is the ultimate live shot. i got to tell you, this reminds me of when i was 8 years old watching neil armstrong step on the moon for the first time, that's the kind of awe we have here. after 15 agonizing minutes, the capsule finally reaches the surface. it's now 11:11 p.m. eastern time. in nearby copiapo, pandemonium. avalos appears to be in good physical condition. rescuers feared the miners would become dizzy during the long, bumpy ride, but avalos walks out of the capsule unaided, wearing special sunglasses to protect his eyes from the rescue lights. his family members, crowd him with joy on his return. he also hugs chilean president sebastian pinera and other rescue workers before being wheeled into a nearby medical facility. during those long months of isolation, avalos was the cameraman filming video of the miners to send up to their families on the surface. those families even while celebrating avalos' return soon hope the other 32 survivors will climb one by one into the capsule for their own ride back to freedom. [ speaking in native language ] >> reporter: florencio avalos had been the cameraman for a lot of the videos that we had been watching for several weeks. and he was selected because he was in good health. but i don't think anyone realized once he got to the top just how good a health he seemed to be in. >> reporter: no, it was amazing. we didn't know what to expect because these men had been underground for almost ten weeks. and the cage opened and he got out and he looked joyous, he looked refreshed and he was so ecstatic, and his little son was there with tears coming out of his eyes. it was just an amazing moment and it made us realize that this is going to be an incredible day or two days, we didn't know at the time -- of these amazing emotional reunions that we would never get tired of watching. >> was there