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“Thanks for being here, Captain. I know these are difficult circumstances for you and your men.”

“The best way the men can help their families is to help you. What do you want us to do?”

“Our team has been assigned these two blocks. Your job is to remove anyone we don’t authorize as volunteer helpers and then to keep the area cordoned off. I guess your first and hardest job will be to get the parents away from that school.”

“Yes, I’ll tell them you’ll dig there first; that their children will be found faster if they remove themselves.”

“Tell them that. But we always start on the buildings that look like they have pockets with survivors. The school was built of bricks and wood and fell flat. There weren’t any survivors there. Tell the parents anything.  Just get them back so we can move in our equipment.”

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“Sir, I’m sorry, but this area was cordoned off yesterday. You can’t be in here.”

“I’m digging out my son.”

“Sir, we’ll dig out this school as quickly as we can. Right now we’re working on an apartment building. We can use volunteers to carry stretchers, if you’d like to work in this area.

“Will you help me?”

“We’ll help you as quickly as we can. We can’t let you stay in this area if you’re not on a supervised volunteer team.”

“Just help me move this chunk of roof away from this pipe. Then I can start digging out the bricks myself.”

“Okay, Buddy. Damn, this must weigh a ton. Let’s rock it then roll it. Okay? One…… two…….THREE. There you go, Buddy. This used to be four stories of bricks and beams. I’m sorry we can’t help you right now. Just stay out of the way of our equipment, okay.?”

“Okay.”

“What’s your name?”

“Miguel.”

“Hey, mine’s Mike! What was your son’s name?”

“Rafael”

“I’m afraid there’s not much hope here, Miguel.”

“No, he’s alive. I can hear his voice through this pipe… You’ll come with your equipment to help me dig as soon as you’re through with that apartment?”

“We’ll dig out the buildings that most likely contain survivors. Then we’ll dig here.”

“Thanks for letting me stay, Mike.”

“Good luck, Miguel.”

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“Miguel?”

“Down here, Rafaela.”

“I’ve brought you something to eat.”

“Don’t come over here! I’m climbing up.”

“Miguel! Your hands!”

“They’re pretty sore. I wish I had some gloves. Thanks for the food and water.”

“Miguel, I can’t come back. The pains have started.”

“I don’t want you to, Rafaela. I’m sorry I can’t be with you when you deliver this child.”

“I’ll take care of this one. You take care of Rafael. Do you still hear him?”

“Sometimes. The American rescue team has rigged up a light for me so I can dig at night. They’ll give me food from their trailer.”

“I’ll pray for you, Miguel.”

“I’ll pray for you, Rafaela.”

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“Miguel, you’ve accomplished quite a feat. We’re going to get some volunteers in here to carry out these bodies you’ve uncovered.”

“Thanks, Mike.”

“For now you come into the trailer, clean up, get some food and rest.”

“How long have I been digging?”

“Five days without stopping.”

“I thought I’d have my son out by now. These volunteers? They’ll dig out my son?”

“Miguel, you’ve done an incredible job, but you’ve made the situation more dangerous by digging straight down. The volunteers will have to move a lot of the bricks away from the shaft before they can go down and recover the bodies you found. They’ll be working all night.”

“Then they’ll dig out my son?”

“We’ll see.”

“I told him I wouldn’t give up. He’s counting on me.”

“Lay down on this cot.”

“O.K. He’s still alive. I talk to him through the pipe.”

“They’ll be working all night. You need to rest now.”

“O.K…. Mike? Later? Will you help me dig?”

“Sure. Go to sleep.”

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“Where am I?”

“You’re in a tent hospital.”

“Who are you?”

“I’ve been assigned to guard you….. keep you from going back into the city.”

“How’s my wife?”

“Rafaela came to see you last night. You have a new son. She’s coming back this afternoon.”

“How long have I been here?”

“You’ve been asleep 18 hours.”

“Did they dig out my son?”

“They took a lot of bodies out of that room you found. Your wife has gone with the other parents to the morgue tent to see if she can find Rafael.”

“Rafael is still alive. I talk to him through the pipe. I promised him I’d dig him out.”

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“So, you think you’re going to stay with rescue work, Hank?”

“I don’t know, Mike. I’m feeling really discouraged right now.”

“I know. First you dig out survivors every few minutes, then every few hours, then one or two a day. After a week, you dig out mostly bodies. Sometimes its people who held on for days then died just before you got to them.”

“Yeah, it gets bad after a while.”

“But you know why I keep doing this job? It’s for those few miraculous survivors who do hold on. That girl yesterday. It had been two days since we dug out our last survivor. Then BAM! There she was! Just fine. That’s why I keep doing this.”

“Do you think we’ll find anymore?”

“The longest successful rescue dig that I ever heard about was twenty-one days. That was an old lady in her eighties. You can’t forecast who’ll survive. The longest I’ve ever personally dug out was an eighteen-day survivor; a little boy.”

“Tomorrow will be ten days.”

“There’ll be more then. I think we’ll find a pocket in that apartment over there. There’s an underground parking garage over there.”

“How about Miguel? He still says he can hear his son.”

“Miguel’s hallucinating.”

“I feel bad that we had to pull the volunteers off of the school after they recovered those bodies.”

“Yeah, Miguel’s upset with us. He’s going to kill himself digging day and night.”

“Well, the guard couldn’t keep track of him. The blockades couldn’t keep him out. His wife and new baby can’t convince him to give up. What can we do?”

“Let’s take him a sandwich and get him to sit down for a while. I want to see just how far that shaft goes now, anyway.”

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“Miguel! Miguel?”

“You don’t need to call him anymore Mike. He’s over here.”

“Is he alright?”

“No.”

“Looks like his heart just gave out?”

“Jeez, look at his hands.”

“He moved a lot of bricks with those hands.”

“This is incredible. You’d never believe one person could do so much without any tools whatso…..”

“Be still!…… I heard someone……. Put your ear against this pipe!”

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“Another miracle story out of San Juan City, today. A teacher and five children are carried out alive this morning after spending over ten days trapped in the basement of an elementary school. Maria Almaguer, our reporter on the scene brings you their story.”

“Thanks, David. This is indeed a miracle. Rescuers say they weren’t even going to dig in the area of the school yet because it appeared to have no pockets. But the survivors were trapped in a small space beside a very sturdy boiler in the basement.

I had a chance to speak briefly with the teacher this morning. She reports that they would have given up long ago except that one of her students, seven-year-old Rafael Lopez, kept saying he could hear his father’s voice through the boiler pipe. His insistence that his father wouldn’t give up until he dug them out is the hope that kept them all alive….”