Jeff Roten recounts his experience in Chile at DCCC
The crowd of onlookers grows as the roaring Schramm drilling rig burrows closer to the 33 Chilean miners trapped 700 meters below. Suddenly, the tension is broken when truck horns and the elated cries of workers and family members peal through the air in a shower of champagne as the drill finally breaks through the last of the rock separating rescue workers from the men deep in the earth.
Jeff Roten, 29, compares the excitement of that moment at the San Jose copper mine, near Copiapo Chile, to winning the Super Bowl. "There was so much excitement," he said. "People screaming and cheering. It was the perfect moment."
Roten was working on a gas and oil rig at a Marcellus Shale deposit when he received the call informing him he was heading to Chile to assist with the rescue operation.
"There was a little bit of fear, because it’s a totally different type of experience, a totally different type of hole," Roten said. "But I was pretty excited because the whole world was watching, so I certainly didn’t say no."
Roten arrived on Sept. 9 at a scene that he described as dismal. "It was pretty rough," he said. "A lot of people were pretty concerned about how long it was going to take us to get to those guys. They didn’t think it was going to happen, but they didn’t want to tell the families that."
Originally from a small town called Holtwood outside Lancaster Pa., Roten attended Delaware County Community College as a mechanical systems major. Afterward he studied diesel mechanics at the Lancaster Technology Center and finally took an internship with John Deere.
For the past six and a half years, Roten has been working at Schramm Inc., a West Chester based company that specializes in drilling equipment and services. Today, he is a technical field representative, a job that requires him to keep his company's machinery running properly at drilling sites.
When the organizers in charge of the rescue effort chose to use a Schramm drilling rig to bore one of three holes at the Chilean mine collapse, it fell on Roten's shoulders to ensure the proper functioning of his company's equipment.
"Twenty four hours a day for 36 days I stayed with it nonstop, Just to make sure if it had a mechanical issue I could keep it running" Roten said.
The Schramm T130XD rig, which Roten was responsible for, was used to dig the 12-inch hole that would eventually be widened enough to lower a rescue capsule. A separate 5 1/2-inch hole had already been dug and was used to get supplies to the men trapped below.
Roten recalls that the operation wasn’t without hurdles. During one incident, the face of their drill bit was ripped off when it struck a mine wall, clogging the hole and halting operations for five days while they fished out the pieces.
After more than a month, Roten's drilling rig finally reached the trapped miners. "It was a feeling of total relief," he said. "It was like an elephant had been sitting on my chest and it finally got up, like a really big weight was gone. I knew that after we got that hole through, the capsule was going to work and we were going to be able to get this over with."
When Roten and the other American workers came home, they were honored by a trip to the Whitehouse to meet President Barak Obama. "You never imagine that coming from a small town you're going to meet the President of the United States," Roten said. "He was a pretty humble, nice guy."
Since returning to America, Roten has been dealing with more attention than he is used to from friends and media. He looks forward to all the attention blowing over so he can "get back to being normal Jeff."
"I hope it never happens again," he added. "I would hate to see another mine disaster, but hopefully in the future we will be even better prepared because of this."
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