Rescuers found the 33 Chilean miners trapped for 17 days in a collapsed copper mine in San Jose, Chile.

The rescue team found the miners after drilling down 2.257 feet to the bottom of the San Jose mine that collapsed. The miners managed to send back a handwritten message saying “Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33” meaning, “all 33 of us are well inside the shelter”.

“Never have so few words brought such happiness to an entire nation,” said Sebastian Piñera, the president of Chile, as he read out the note.

A second note the miners sent back indicated that they managed to build a makeshift refuge where they are staying right now. They created a canal of fresh water using a bulldozer down in the mine and managed to fix the lighting in the dark and dangerous copper mine using electricity from a truck engine.

The bad news is it would take about four months to set the miners free from the collapsed mine. “A shaft 66cm in diameter will take at least 120 days,” said Andre Sougarret, lead engineer on the rescue operation. Help from around the world in form of rescue equipments arrived to build a tunnel reaching 700 meters underground that will serve as the escape route for the miners.

The roof of the mine collapsed last August 5 trapping the 33 miners. For two weeks, rescuers continually tunneled trough the mine hoping to find the shelter that the miners made. Missing their target, rescue officials blamed the mine operators for operating without using modern safety equipments and an updated map.

Having found the refuge, rescuers now plan to send down food, water and medicine through the hole created by the rescue mission to keep the miners alive and healthy while rescue and mining experts debate the options for building an escape route.