Being American I tend to want things to start immediately and end fast. But hearing the obstacles they are working through, I understand they can only go so fast and stay safe.
Well, rescues deep underground are often difficult, slow and dramatic. The Chilean mining accident, for example, also mobilized the whole world. In 2010, 33 miners disappeared underground after their mine collapsed. 17 days later there was little hope of finding them alive, when a deep drilling probe broke into the chambers where they were trapped, 700 meters underground, and they taped a message on it saying that "we are alive in the refuge, the 33 of us". Apparently the miners had been hearing the noise from the drilling machine for days, and you can imagine their happiness when it reached them. The rescuers were able to send them food, but taking them out was very difficult and it was not clear whether it would be technically possible. Finally they were able to extract them alive, after 70 days trapped.
In France in 1999, seven expert cave explorers were stuck in a cave system for 10 days after heavy storms caused unforeseen flooding. Unable to reach them through kilometers of flooded tunnels, the rescuers drilled shafts into the rock and finally reached an underground river which they followed and got to a cave where they found the trapped men. They had rationed their food, water and gas and still had supplies for two days when they were found.
In Venezuela in 1991 two experienced open water divers, but not trained in cave diving, were exploring an underwater cave system, looking for an underground lake. They got lost and lost contact with each other. One of them lost all sense of direction, found an underground air pocket and became trapped there, alone, sitting on a mud island. He spent the following days praying, hoping for rescue but thinking of suicide. Meanwhile, his partner had gone out and raised the alarm. Several diver friends were quickly called but they were unable to get deep into the cave, where the muddy water allowed no visibility. The following day two experienced American cave divers who had agreed to help arrived. They thought they were looking for a body, as in all their time as cave rescuers they had never rescued anyone alive. So when they saw how bad the conditions were in the cave they were sorely tempted to go back and give up, since it was not worth risking their lives so much to recover the corpse of someone they didn't even know. However, they persevered, and one of them saw a light, belonging to the trapped diver. When the two rescuers reached him, he thought he had died and they were angels, but he was alive and he was able to come out of the cave with them.
In 2014 a cave explorer was injured on the head by a rockfall in the deepest cave in Germany, and a large and very complex rescue operation was launched. It took 700 rescuers and 11 days to take him out, through several very difficult vertical passages, where the rescuers had to use their own bodies as counterweight to raise the stretcher...
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