THE trapped 33 miners in Chile, their relatives and government officials were counting down the hours yesterday after rescuers finished reinforcing an escape shaft to avoid a last minute disaster as the miners’ two month ordeal draws to an end, according to agency accounts.

However, a torrent of emotions awaits the 33 miners when they finally rejoin the outside world possibly tomorrow after an expected harrowing and challenging world’s most complex rescue operations and most stunning survival stories.

After weeks of prayers, vigils and agonising waiting, anxiety is giving way to joy as wives, parents and children count down to reunions with their loved ones.

The men, who have set a world record for the length of time workers have survived underground after a mining accident, have been doing exercises to keep their weight down for their final ascent.

Reuters and British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported that engineers completed lining part of the narrow, nearly 2,050 foot-long (625-meter) shaft with metal tubes yesterday morning.

As at the time of compiling this report, the engineers were test running with special escape capsules, and the Chilean government aims to start hoisting the men to freedom one by one by tomorrow.

They installed the tubes to head off the risk of rocks from the side of the drill shaft falling down onto the capsules dubbed “Phoenix” after the mythical bird, and blocking them from reaching the surface.

“I’m so tired. It’s been far too many days doing nothing, just sitting waiting,” said Alicia Campos, whose son, Daniel Herrera, is among the trapped miners, as she lined up for a fish sandwich at the tent settlement near the mine entrance dubbed “Camp Hope.” She wants her son to take up another profession.

Chile’s Mining Minister, Laurence Golborne, said on Sunday rescuers could start lifting the miners to the surface yesterday evening if all went well.

President Sebastian Pinera, who has ordered a revamp of mine safety regulations in the wake of the accident, has said he plans to visit the mine today. One of the 33 miners is a Bolivian national, and Bolivia’s President Evo Morales has vowed to visit the mine for his rescue.

Rescue officials said they would push ahead boring a separate shaft with a rig usually used to drill for oil as a back-up plan, just in case there are any complications. They have halted a third drill.

In a land still recovering from a devastating February earthquake, celebrations broke out across Chile on Saturday when the drill broke through 65 days after the August 5 collapse at the small gold and copper mine in the far northern Atacama Desert.

The miners will journey to the surface in capsules just wider than a man’s shoulders with their eyes closed and will immediately be given dark glasses to avoid damaging their eyesight after spending so long in a dimly-lit tunnel.

They will be given astronaut-style medical checks in a field hospital set up at the mine. Then they will be able to spend some time with their families, before being flown by helicopter to nearby Copiapo to be stabilised at another hospital.

Helicopter pilots conducted practice flights in the dark overnight.

The miners are in remarkably good health, although some have developed skin infections.

Health Minister Jaime Manalich said at least two rescuers, one of them a paramedic, would travel down in the capsules to help prepare the men for their journey to freedom.

He said the government had chosen the most psychologically stable and experienced of the miners to be the first to enter the capsules and face the harrowing, claustrophobic journey.

“They have to be psychologically mature, have a great deal of mining experience and be able to handle a quick training on how to use the harness and oxygen mask in the Phoenix capsule,” Manalich said.

The government brought in experts from the United States (U.S.) NASA space agency to help keep the men mentally and physically fit during the rescue, which has gripped the world and drawn messages of support from Pope Benedict and World Cup soccer stars.

But when they finally come out, they’ll be celebrated at first, embraced by their families and pursued by more than 750 journalists who have converged on the mine, competing for interviews and images to feed to a world intensely curious to hear their survival story.

They’ve been invited to visit presidential palaces, take all-expense paid vacations and appear on countless TV shows.

Contracts for book and movie deals are pending, along with job offers. More money than they could dream of is already awaiting their signature.

Right now they are true heroes. Some will become celebrities if they want to. But eventually, a new reality will set in — and for most, it won’t be be anything like the life they knew before the mine collapsed above their heads.