Rescue Effort Reaches Miners

SAN JOSÉ MINE, Chile—Miners that had been trapped deep underground for 69 days were pulled to the rescue one by one Wednesday in a process that went faster than expected and kept people around the world transfixed.

The miners rose to the surface in a red, white and blue rescue capsule dubbed “the Phoenix.” By Wednesday afternoon, 24 of the 33 miners were above ground.

As they emerged, websites of Chilean newspapers were keeping a running score, almost like of a sporting event. “Things have gone extraordinarily well up to now,” said Health Minister Jaime Mañalich.

President Sebastián Piñera said the rescue could wrap up faster than anticipated. At the current pace of a miner surfacing every 40 minutes, the operation could end Wednesday evening, he said in a news conference, rather than on Thursday as originally expected.

Florencio Ávalos, a 31-year-old father of two, was the first to be rescued after having endured longer underground than any mine accident survivors to date.

Mr. Ávalos emerged above ground just after midnight on Wednesday Chile time as rescuers cheered. He was greeted by family members and government officials as he made his way into a triage area where he would undergo an initial checkup.

Mario Sepúlveda, the chatty “presenter” who acted as host for video recordings the miners had made underground, was the second miner brought to the surface.

After emerging from the capsule, Mr. Sepúlveda, gave a bear hug to all of the dignitaries present, including Mr. Piñera and the first lady. Mr. Sepúlveda grabbed stones collected from the mine’s belly and handed them out with a big smile to a laughing Mr. Piñera and Mining Minister Laurence Golborne.

The oldest trapped miner was brought out early Wednesday. Mario Gómez, 63, who suffers from the lung disease silicosis, dropped to his knees in gratitude after surfacing.

Mr. Mañalich, the health minister, told reporters that bringing Mr. Gómez back to the surface had posed challenges. He was outfitted with a special face mask to ensure that he received enough oxygen.

Bolivian President Evo Morales arrived at the Copiapó airport in northern Chile early Wednesday morning to meet with his countryman, Carlos Mamani. Mr. Mamani, the only non-Chilean among the trapped miners, was the fourth miner rescued.

U.S. President Barack Obama said the resolve of Chilean people has inspired the world, the Associated Press reported. Mr. Obama, who watched some of the rescue operations on television, said the rescue is a tribute to their determination, and that of the Chilean government and its people. He also praised American companies that played a role in the rescue.

Before the emergence of Mr. Ávalos, a rescuer worker, Manuel González, had ridden down into the bottom of the mine. Spectral images from a camera showed him embracing the miners. It was the first direct contact they had had with another person since the Aug. 5 cave-in. Mr. Piñera told Mr. Gonzalez before his departure, “may God be with you, the Chilean people are with you. Bring back the miners with you.”

And so he brought back Mr. Avalos. Earlier, rescuers lowered the unmanned 14-foot capsule some 200 feet, while engineers made last-minute adjustments to systems to enable communication between the miners and the surface during their trips. On a second unmanned test run, rescuers descended the capsule the full length of the shaft.

The government had previously revealed the order in which the men will be extracted from the mine, where they have already endured longer than any previous mine accident survivors. The first men were chosen because they were thought to have the physical and mental attributes to work out any bugs that might emerge in the capsule.

At Camp Hope, the sprawling tent city the miners’ relatives established after the Aug. 5 cave-in, family members anxiously counted the minutes for the rescue to begin its final phase.

“My heart is beating fast and it feels like it’s about to explode,” said Priscilla Ávalos, who has been traveling to the mine every weekend to be closer to her brothers Renan and Florencio Ávalos.

Fabiola Acuña, wife of miner Claudio Acuña, was digesting the news that her husband had drawn No. 26 in the miner extraction lottery. “The wait will even be longer,” she sighed. Health Minister Jaime Mañalich said that several miners had offered to be the last man out of the mine, but that distinction would fall to the shift foreman, Luis Urzúa, whose leadership skills have been widely praised.

Down below, the miners made final preparations of their own.

“The mountain began to creak in the morning, but in the afternoon it stopped creaking,” miner Dario Segovia wrote in a letter his brother provided to the Santiago newspaper La Tercera Tuesday. “We prayed. All of us are uneasy about the size of the rocks.”

The operation bears risks. After a drill finished boring a 28-inch-wide hole into the chamber where the miners are located early Saturday, engineers decided to install steel casing in only the top 315 feet of the 2,050-foot shaft. They are counting on the rest of the hole being smooth and sound enough to serve as a safe conduit for escape.

“If a fragment of rock was to wedge the capsule to the wall of the hole, the [miners] would have their work ahead of them to free the capsule,” said Louis King, managing director of Australian Mine Rescue Consultants, which isn’t involved in the rescue effort. “I don’t think it is time to celebrate just yet.”

A spirit of solidarity has bloomed in the Atacama Desert, the barren wasteland where the mine is located, since the cave-in. Volunteers from nearby towns came to cook and baby-sit for the families of miners who were camping above the mine. Local mining companies brought drills to San Jose and began sending probes deep into the earth to look for the chamber where the men were holed up—or find their corpses.

A probe made contact with the miners 17 days after the cave-in, when the miners were down to the last two cans of the tuna that had sustained them through the ordeal.

“Life is hard here, there are earthquakes and accidents,” said Macarena Valdes, a 30-year-old topographer who helped direct the positioning of the drills in the rescue effort “People have to work together.”

After the miners were found, their cause ceased to be simply Chilean as the drama was followed around the world.

Schoolchildren in St. Paul, Minn., and Fredricktown, Pa., sent letters of support to the miners’ families. Pearl Jam front man Eddie Vedder celebrated them on his Twitter account: “Viva chile! 33 miners are alive!”

Town leaders and industrialists from Nice, France, shipped half a ton of protein bars to the mine, thinking the men might need nourishment.

English soccer legend Bobby Charlton, himself the son of a miner, invited the miners on an all-expenses paid trip to see the Manchester United Football Club play. A website collected thousands of messages of support from throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

“Miners are working-class heroes in the best of times, but in the worst of times everyone can relate to taking a job where there are high risks but really no choice,” said Harley Shaiken, a specialist on Latin America and labor at the University of California, Berkeley.

The miners were emerging looking healthier than many had expected and even clean-shaven, and at least one, Mr. Sepúlveda, the second to taste freedom, bounded out and thrust a fist in the air in the style of a prizefighter.

Mr. Sepúlveda’s performance exiting from the shaft appeared to confirm what many Chileans thought when they saw his engaging performances in videos sent up from below— that he could have a future as a TV personality.

But he tried to quash the idea as he spoke to viewers of Chile’s state television channel while sitting with his wife and children shortly after his rescue.

“The only thing I’ll ask of you is that you don’t treat me as an artist or a journalist, but as a miner,” he said. “I was born a miner and I’ll die a miner.”

Write to Matt Moffett at matthew.moffett@wsj.com

Write to Matt Moffett at matthew.moffett@wsj.com