Face of hope looks for rescue from depths of collapsed mine

• Florencio Antonio Avalos Silva, one of the trapped men, peers into a video camera lowered down a narrow shaft. It took seven attempts to find them Picture: Getty Images

Rescuers made contact with the men by lowering a probe into the shaft, and the miners 2,300ft down sent up a note saying they were "fine".

The biggest challenge facing the workers may be preserving their sanity in the months it will take to dig them out.

The intense rescue effort finally reached the men at the San Jose mine in the Atacama desert on Sunday night after weeks of mistakes, new cave-ins and other false starts.

Now the plan is to carve a wider tunnel, just big enough for the men to be pulled out one by one. That equipment works much more slowly than the bore that drilled the 15cm-wide shaft used to make first contact.

The drill broke through 2,257ft of rock to reach the emergency refuge where the miners have gathered. The trapped men quickly tied two notes to the end of a probe that rescuers pulled to the surface, announcing in big red letters: "All 33 of us are fine in the shelter."

Above ground, where many had begun to give up hope, the scene above ground became one of celebration, with a barbecue for the miners' families, roving musicians, lighted candles and Chilean flags.

President Sebastian Pinera said: "All of Chile is crying with excitement and joy."

The hole already drilled will be used to send down small capsules containing food, water and oxygen if necessary, and sound and video equipment so the miners can better communicate with loved ones and rescuers. That two-way communication may be key to keeping them thinking positive.

A video camera lowered down the probe shaft showed some of the miners, stripped to the waist in the underground heat, waving happily. But they were not able to establish audio contact.

The miners seemed to be aware that their rescue may take a long time, according to one of them, Mario Gomez, perhaps the eldest of the trapped men at 63, who wrote a note to his wife. "Even if we have to wait months to communicate … I want to tell everyone that I'm good and we'll surely come out OK," he wrote, scrawling the words on a sheet of notebook paper the miners tied to the probe. "Patience and faith. God is great and the help of my God is going to make it possible to leave this mine alive."

The men have already been trapped underground longer than all but a few miners rescued in recent history.

Mine safety expert Davitt McAteer said their survival after 17 days is very unusual, but that since they have made it this far they should emerge physically fine.

However the stress of being trapped underground for a long period of time can be significant.

Mine officials and relatives of the workers had hoped the men reached a shelter below where the tunnel collapsed on 5 August. But they feared the shelter's emergency air and food supplies would last only 48 hours.