Chilean Miners Rescue Live Update: 13 OF 33 Miners Rescued

Chilean Miners Rescue Live Update goes from 5 to 8 to 13 miners rescued as of 7:27 AM PDT. And all of this without a mishap. Thank God for that.

According to CNN, the latest miner to surface is the Forman, 27-year old Carlos Barros (in CNN photo below), who's worked as a miner for 10 months until this incident.

Before Carlos, Edison Pena was the 12th of the Chilean Miners rescued, Jorge Galleguillos before him was number 11, and Alex Vega number 10. Mario Gomez, who knelt down to pray after leaving the capsule, was number 9.

The first of the Chilean Miners to rise was 31-year-old Florencio Avalos, the one who was in the best shape to make the trip after being down below for 68 days. He was followed by Mario Sepulveda, who hugged his wife and everyone he could get his hand on when he got out of the capsule.

There are now 20 underground and 12 hours have elapsed since the rescue started.

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said that it takes 40 minutes to rescue each miner, and they plan to get out three miners every two hours. That means all of the 33 miners will be out in another 30 hours from this time point, as there are 20 remaining miners.

That means the effort called Operation San Antonio will extend through Thursday afternoon.

Stay tuned.

Mario Gomez Rescued - CNN Live Stream: Chilean Miners Rescue

From 8 rescued miners to 9 rescued miners!

CNN Live Stream: Chilean Miners Rescue update. Mario Gomez, the oldest of the trapped Chilean Miners at 63 years old, prayed as the World watched after he got out of the Fehnix capsule that brought him from 2,700 feet below the Earth in Chile.

Mario Gomez makes it nine of the Chilean Miners rescued of 33 trapped down there. The other good news is that of nine trips, the system is working well with no malfunctions or delays. As of now, it's 4:52 AM PDT.

The World Keeps Watching The Rescue

This event has captured the attention of the industrialized World, as something is being done that, when the Chilean Miners were first discovered, some thought could not be done. But the World's experts pulled together and threw cost out of the window to rescue 33 trapped common people. People no one knew until now.

That's what's so cool about all of this. It's so great to watch the World come together around the common good of saving the lives of people we don't even know.

Chilean Miners Rescue Live Update: 8 OF 33 Miners Rescued

In this Chilean Miners Rescue Live Update, 8 of 33 Miners have been rescued as of this writing at 3:54 AM PDT, with 25 to go.

Florencio Avalos was the first, and  rose from 2,700 feet below the Earth, a distance as long as the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai is tall. He was followed by Mario Sepulveda, who, after hugging his wife, must have hugged Chilean President Sebastian Pinera as many times as days (68) he was trapped underground, then proceeded to hug everyone in his orbit.

After Sepulveda followed Juan Illanes Palma, a 52-year old retired mechanic. Then game Carlos Mamani, from Bolivia, who, according to CNN, said he would never work in a mine again. (Go figure.) Carlos Mamani, then gave way to 19-year old Jimmy Sanchez, the youngest of the trapped Chilean Miners and the father of a newborn girl.

Following him were Osman Isidro Araya, a carrier pigeon handler, and Jose Ojeda Vidal, a master driller who has served as a secretary for the miners.

Better Working Conditions

While Mamani does not intend to work in a mine again, Sepulveda does. He's already pushing for better working conditions.   This corner hopes that machines eventually replace human in the mining industry.  It seems the deeper we're capable of going as a society, the harder it is to get out miner.  In fact, there should be an international law that mining companies can't drill down in areas without a plan for the rescue of anyone trapped where they are mining.

An International Affair

While Chile is rightfully proud of rescuing its miners, the World should be thanked for its involvement. Everyone from Houston, Texas firm Drillers Supply International, to the media and communications people, like those at CNN, covering this historic event and bringing live stream to a World audience.

Chilean Miners Rescue Live: Chilean Flag Mistaken For Texas Flag

Chilean Flag

In the story of the Chilean Miners Rescue, shown live on CNN, you know the State of Texas is watching because they're mistaking the Chilean Flag for the Texas Flag.

On CNN's live stream, the Chilean Flag is displayed in the miners lair over 2,000 feet below the Earth's surface, above ground, and it seems everywhere you look on television.

In San Antonio, Texas, they think it's the Texas Flag.

Texas Flag

The only difference between the Chilean Flag and The Texas Flag is the blue that is in the top left of the Chilean Flag runs all the way down the Texas flag. That's the only difference.

Tell that to Atascosa County absentee voters, who have made the mistake for years according to My San Antonio.com:

Election officials recently learned that small instructional inserts in the county's absentee ballot packets were stamped with an illustration of the wrong flag.

Just below the words “Make Your Vote Count,” there it was: not the proud red, white and blue of the Lone Star State, but the strikingly similar Chilean flag.

Judging from the Goggle searches for Texas Flag during the time of the Chilean Miners Rescue Live, it seems Texans are still making the mistake. Someone's looking to learn what involvement, if any, Texas had in the Chilean Miners Rescue. The State of Texas had no official role, but according to CNN International, there was a Texas company involved in the creation of the drill.

Drillers Supply International

Greg Hall's, who was part of the team that supplied the drill, is from a Houston, Texas company called Drillers Supply International. According to Fox Houston.com, Drillers Supply International developed the plan and formed the crew to dig a hole wide enough to get the capsule into and bring the miners to Earth.

Chilean Miners Rescue Brings World Together

Florencio Avalos first Chilean Miner up

The amazing story of the Chilean Miners Rescue is bringing the World together. The plan called Operation San Lorenzo is going very well, and three of the 33 Chilean Miners have been brought to the surface without mishap.

It's the first time in the World's history that a group of people have been rescued from so far beneath the Earth after stating down there for so long - between 38 and 39 days depending on how you measure it.

The first miner, 31-year old Florencio Avalos, came up because he was the healthiest of the group of 33. Mr. Avalos hugged and shook hands with the President of Chile and then was reunited with his family before going into a kind of debriefing process.

The second miner, Mario Sepulveda, came up, hugged his wife, then hugged the President of Chile at least three times, then the other staff around him, and in a frenzy of emotion, then went out to hug the drill workers who helped on the Operation San Lorenzo project. It seemed like he hugged everyone there.

The third miner, Juan IIlanes Palmas, is about to be raised in a capsule that's 28-inches in diameter as this is written. Now, there are 30 miners and at the rate this is going, all should be rescued by Wednesday morning in the United States.

Twitter Impact Not Dramatic, Yet

As of now at 9:56 PDT, "BET Hip Hop Awards" is the top trending topic on Twitter, with "Miner" at the bottom. That perhaps reflects the younger demographic that's less in tune with World Events, but also the fact that not every television network is covering this. In fact, it looks like CNN's the only one to do so. That means this is a ratings coup for CNN, which with its CNN International Division, can cover the Chilean Miners Rescue well into the next day.

Stay tuned and catch the CNN Live Stream with a click here.

CNN Live Stream: Chilean Miners Rescue Live - Florencio Avalos First Up

UPDATE: 8 of 33 Miners Rescued

Florencio Avalos First Miner Up

(Click here for CNN Live Stream of Chilean Miners Rescue where Florencio Avalos was the first miner up.)

CNN does live events well. The Chilean Miners Rescue live show on as this is written is proof that CNN's focus should be on live events and not on copying Fox News. Constant ratings returns prove that when there's a live event: a disaster, court case, or news conference, CNN does consistently well both in ratings and in event production for television.

In the case of The Chilean Miners Rescue, CNN dispatched it's big guns - Larry King, John King and Anderson Cooper - to focus on this event. Moreover, CNN had experts giving us reports on what the miners would have to deal with when they surfaced.

Florencio Avalos Makes History

When the first miner, 31-year-old Florencio Avalos surfaced, you could see and feel the collective sigh of a country, Chile, and the World. There was so much that could have gone wrong, and still can over the next day or so that it takes to get out all of the 33 miners.

Florencio Avalos becomes the first person to be rescued from a 68-day entrapment in a mine over 2,000 feet below the surface of the Earth. The decision was to have Avalos brought up first because he's the healthiest one of the group. According to CNN, the idea is the other weaker miners will be more encouraged to make the trip up, which takes about 15 minutes.

You can monitor the event via the CNN live blog with a click here as well.

Eric Stoltz Could Have Been Marty McFly Before Michael J. Fox

A shocker of a news item in pop culture: Eric Stoltz was set to play the role of "Marty McFly" in 1985's Back To The Future until Director Robert Zemeckis realized that the crew wasn't getting the laughs from his performance they sought.   (You can see a segment from the footage in the video above.)

According to EW's Popwatch, Zemeckis and staff trashed the five weeks of filming done with Eric Stoltz, got Michael J. Fox to play the role, redid the entire five weeks of shooting, and the rest is cinema history.

Fox was then the star of the situation comedy called Family Ties, where Fox played the conservative Alex P. Keaton. While he and Family Ties was popular, Fox's version of Marty McFly gave him a permanent place in popular culture due to the success of the Back to the Future Trilogy.

All of this is in the Back to the Future 25th Anniversary Trilogy collection due October 26. But the unanswered question is would Back To The Future have been as successful with Eric Stoltz, even with his comedy timing problems? Apparently it's safe to note that if Eric Stoltz had remained as Marty McFly, there would not have been a Back to the Future II or Back to the Future III.

But in fairness to Stolz, it just wasn't his role; he went on to critical acclaim in The Mask.

Back To The Future A California Story

For this blogger, Back To The Future is really a story of Mill Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. The town of "Hill Valley" was really Mill Valley, complete with the town square. In fact, Hill Valley was designed as a fictional California town in the movie. The film, as a result, has what was intended: the feel of a small California town and culture.