Rescue workers started drilling a hole to reach the trapped Chilean miners more than 2,300 feet below.

As a first step for a weeklong digging, rescuers started digging 50 feet into the rock for a “pilot hole” to guide the way for the rescue, using a 31-ton drill. In a process that could take four months, the drillers will replace the drill with larger bits to expand the hole and pull the miners trough.

There are reports that the miners moved nearly 1,000 feet deeper to camp on a drier area. The rescuers presented a new video that showed the miners to be generally positive but emotional about their separation from their families.

Since the cave-in on August 5, the miners have been trapped more than 2,300 feet down inside the San Jose gold and copper mine beneath the Chile’s Atacama Desert. The incident now equals the ordeal in China last year, where only three miners survived, trapped in a loaded mine for 25 days. It was the longest known survival in an underground disaster.

On Sunday afternoon, the miners were each allowed a brief conversation with a family member trough a newly installed telephone line that the rescuers rigged in the mine to link the miners with Camp Hope, a nearby tent village where their relatives gathered.

Omar Reygadas, 56, asked to speak to his youngest son, Luciano, and they had just a minute to talk, said the young boy. “I told him about us, that we’re well, that we’re all supporting him, praying for him,” he said. Omar said that he was doing the same and reassured his son that all the miners were all calm and healthy.

The latest video the miners sent up proved what Omar said. In the video, the miners were seen shirtless and wearing a quick-drying white surgical trousers. The miners said in the video that they are now doing better since they received food and water from the rescuers, add to that the encouragement that they receive from their families trough handwritten notes that both parties passed through a tiny gap hole.