Buried Alive! How 33 Miners Survived 69 Days

Author: Elaine Scott

This is a non-fiction account of the events that happened when an accident happened at the San Jose mine in the Atacama Desert of Chile.  33 Miners went down over 2300 feet below the surface of the earth for their shift on August 5, 2010.  The roof of the shaft they were in collapsed.  This left them stranded, but no one died.  The foreman that day was Luis Urzua, who was well-respected and strong leader.  I truly believe that all 33 people survived because of this gentleman.  He moved everyone to a safe area and immediately took control of the situation.  Without his leadership, many of the people may not have survived.  Another theme that was touched upon was that working together to solve a problem can really help to save lives.  The fact that NASA was called in on the solution was just neat! The story is overwhelmingly inspiring and I am very happy that I found the book.  I have already come up with some neat activities to use along with the book.  I will be using this next year in my classroom.