AILSA CHANG, HOST:
In Mexico, a miner has been rescued two weeks after he was first trapped in a flooded tunnel almost a thousand feet underground. Katie Silver reports from Mexico City.
UNIDENTIFIED ARMY OFFICER: (Speaking Spanish).
KATIE SILVER, BYLINE: This is the moment rescuers reach Francisco Zapata Najera after two weeks trapped underground in a gold mine.
UNIDENTIFIED ARMY OFFICER: (Speaking Spanish).
SILVER: An army officer asks his name and how he is. He replies, I'm well. The officer tells him they're going to bring him out. Forty-two-year-old Zapata was discovered in waist-deep water. He managed to signal rescuers by repeatedly switching his flashlight on and off. He was one of 25 miners working in a gold mine in the northern state of Sinaloa, when a dam used to hold mining waste burst in late March.
Twenty-one miners managed to escape. Zapata was among four miners left behind. Of the four who remained trapped, one died, one was found after a five-day search, and the search continues for the remaining missing man. Even after Zapata was found, his 14-day ordeal wasn't over. He was left underground with water, tins of tuna and energy bars supplied by the rescue team, while crews worked to reduce the level of the rising water. Twenty hours would pass before...
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINE RUNNING)
UNIDENTIFIED ARMY OFFICER: (Speaking Spanish).
(APPLAUSE)
SILVER: Once on the surface, he's greeted by medical teams and taken by air to a hospital, where he's reunited with his family. After all those hours in darkness, Zapata says he never lost faith. For NPR, I'm Katie Silver in Mexico City.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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