October 17, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Greg Hall wasn’t looking for fame when Chile’s government asked for help rescuing 33 trapped miners. A businessman and Catholic deacon from Texas, he simply believed he could make a difference. Over 69 tense days, Hall and his team drilled through solid rock to reach the men the world feared were lost. He later said it was God who guided every turn of the drill. While the film The 33 told the story, Hall’s name was left out, which suited him just fine. For him, the miracle wasn’t the credit. It was that all 33 men saw daylight again.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. The thirty three,
starring Antonio Banderis, recounts the extraordinary story of the twenty
ten Chilean mining disaster that buried thirty three miners twenty
three hundred feet underground for sixty nine days before their
unprecedented rescue. The world was riveted by the story, but
(00:32):
the name of the man whose plan and drilling equipment
made that rescue possible was never mentioned in the film.
His character is conflated with one of his employees, a
driller named Jeff Hart, played in the film by James Brolin.
And as you're about to hear, that's all right with
business owner and Catholic Deacon Greg Hall.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
You've all heard about it, the Chilean mine rescue, they
called There's been books written about it. There's a movie
out about it called The thirty three, where James Brolin
plays me, and it's amalgamation of myself and my driller. Now,
I will tell you to go see the movie. He's
much more cranky than I ever was. But I'm gonna
tell you the backstory that the books stn't have, that
(01:15):
the movies don't have. Before I start, I want just
to take a second, and I want you to think
about that person or persons who's most dear to you,
and imagine that the phone rings and the voice on
the other end tells you that that person is gone.
They don't know where they are, They don't know if
they live or die, They just know they're gone. That
(01:38):
was a phone call that went out in August of
twenty ten in the little bitty mining town in Copiapoltilli
called San Juan Mine. There had been an earthquake in
the mind and the walls had begun to shake and
the roofs to begin to collapse, and the people had
ran for their life. And when the dust settled there
were thirty three of their brothers unaccounted for. Didn't know
(02:00):
where they were. The phone calls went out to the families.
The phone call went out to the government. The government
ex immediately dispatched a team of commandos the ghosts try
to find the miners. One intrepid team was able to
repel down a ventilator's shaft down to four hundred meters
before finding the path blocked, so they knew if the
miners were alive, they were somewhere between four hundred meters
(02:23):
and eight hundred meters. That was the deepest shaft ever drilled.
So the government decided to take all the local drilling
rigs out there and get them on site and have
them start blindly punching holes hoping to find somebody. The
first problem they ran into is all the drilling rigs,
and there were nine available. They only carry enough equipment
to go four hundred and thirty meters. That's about as
deep as you go for a production hole in Chili,
(02:45):
And so they asked what was going on, and the
miners told them where there's a company called Petfoi Keipos
and Anto Fagasta, Chili that makes all our equipment and
they supply all our technical people call them. That's my
company that I started in nineteen ninety two, so they
called my manager there. I was in Cypress, Texas at
the time. I remember thinking as I heard the plans
to rescue them, six months nine months a year, and
(03:07):
I couldn't sleep at night. Everything I'd have tried to
develop showed it wouldn't work. All the computer moduling, all
the mathematic everything, trying to drill a half a mile
through solid granite a two foot hole without using liquids.
It can't be done. It can't be done. So I
finally told my team, well, the only answer, stop doing
(03:31):
stop doing the calculations, and let's go. The technical drilling
was even worse than I thought. But there was something
else that I didn't realize. The political situation we had
got into. You see, President Pinetta was a new president,
and they're very powerful people in Chile. So they quickly
decided if they could have a disaster to mine, that
(03:52):
Pinetta would fall and they could take over. So they
visited us and they offered me as much money as
I could have, contracts, anything I wanted. If I would
just leave, I was a hero, go a gringo. Just
let them stay here, but they'll die. Why did you care?
Pinetta will fall? And then, thinking back of it, I
(04:15):
know Jesus, but there was Satan showing all the riches
of the world. So I said no, and they said, well,
you understand that the chances of your failure are very big,
and if you fail, you may lose everything. If you
kill them, which is a possibility, you may never leave Chili.
One day, when we were having tremendously tough times, they
(04:38):
maneuvered a meeting with all the government where I had
to accept full responsibility for the job or we were finished.
And so I did that, and when I walked out,
I was very shaken because what did I gotten myself into.
It was lucky that it was time to pray the
Liturgy of the Hours. So I took my leturgy and
I actually went out in the desert with all It
(04:59):
was was desert to a junkyard. And I would tell
you that I was crying, but I can't because miners
we don't cry. But I was crying. But I started
to read the liturgy, and I'll never forget it. The
first psalm was Psalm sixty three, Oh God, you are
my God. For you, I long for you. My soul
is thirsty, like pining, like a dry, weary land without water. Man,
(05:22):
it just hit me. I said, you know, that same
Holy spirit's here, he's with us. We're gonna do this,
because as Augustine said, right is right even when no
one's doing it, and wrong is wrong even when everybody's
doing it. We're gonna do this. So I went back there,
and I won't tell you that everything went well. It didn't.
We fought the government was coming. The bad guys would
(05:44):
come and entice us with different things and different threads,
but we kept on going. By the time I got
out there, the drilling had started and they had chain
lead fences up and everybody's faces were pressed, all the
families pressed, and they had made a tamp called compost
Baranza camp Hope, and they wouldn't leave. So we started
drilling five days past, eight days past, ten days past.
(06:09):
Every now and then we would hit a little cavern
and we would send a camera down there. Nothing. We
started to think, when do we give up? When do
we quit? But all the families were there and they
held up signs, please don't leave my son down there.
And it say, it's funny because when I started talking
about it, I actually go back there and I get emotional.
(06:33):
That's just the way it is. I'll try not to
be too much, but I can remember the smells and
the people. But anyway, on day fifteen, we hit a
cavern and we heard tapping on the drill pipe. All
thirty three people were alive. They had been rationing. If
you go see the movie, it's very good showing the
valiant valor of the miners and their families. They were
(06:55):
surviving on almost no food, starting off with a little
half a cup of milk and a teaspoon tuna cutting
it down. On day ten, they cut it in half.
By the time we found them, they had no food
left and they were drinking out of radiators of some
machinery that was down there to stay alive when we
found them. So we found them. But as we kept
on drilling, one day, we were within one hundred meters
of the miners, and what happened is what all the
(07:18):
models showed. We got stuck a final time and we
couldn't get out. Our drill rig was maxed way overmaxed,
so overmaxed that the drillery manufacturers sent their top technician
to sleep on the rig with us because I had
everything about two hundred percent higher than it was allowed.
But you know, we were doing what we were doing,
(07:38):
but we were stuck, and everybody looked at me, and
there was nothing that I could do. We were finished.
And when you're stuck, and that kind of drilling, every
minute you're stuck, you're worse stuck. It doesn't get better.
And we were finished. But I remember thinking, and I
don't know how it popped into my mind, the Lord
works in mysterious ways. But bartimaeis popped into my mind. Bartimaeus,
(08:00):
you remember the blind guy. We're thinking, God, why is Barchi? Maeus?
Get you like, give me some blue oil or some
redded hair, or you know, Bartimaeus. But then I started
thinking about it. Do you remember the story of Bartimaus.
He was blind and he came up and he called Jesus,
(08:21):
and Jesus asked him a very simple question, what do
you want me to do? Whenever I used to read that,
I was thought, what a weird question. If I was Bartimaeus,
I said, what do you think? Take me skiing? I'm blind,
but I don't know what do you want me to do?
But you know something, it's an important question. And we
(08:43):
understand because Jesus had told the apostles when he washed
their feet, he said, I call you friend, and think
about what friends do? They talk to each other, they
have relationships. And so Bartimaeus had told him I want
to see, and Jesus said, you'll see. So I said it.
I said it very clearly on that drill rig I said, Lord,
(09:04):
I've done everything I could. I can do nothing else.
Those are your kids down there, not just my brothers.
You need to send your angels down and you need
to dig that bit out or we're finished. And really
they're finished. And I don't know how long I pray,
and I don't know if it was twenty minutes or
an hour. I have no idea. Time went crazy, but
(09:25):
the bit started to move and it can't the bit
cannot move. I have given over sixty talks all over
the world. And what's funny is when I talk to
a secular group, they'll come back and say, well, you know, Deacon,
you're renowned. Whether I am or not, you're renowned in
the world. Is an expert a drilling Tell me, really,
what happened? I say, God, move the bit. You don't
know what you're talking about. But God moved that bit
(09:51):
and we went down and we reached the miners and
we left. We made it. We decided we didn't want
to stay around till they came up. We didn't want
glory going home, and I was always leaving. One of
the head drilling engineers of South America he came up
to me and he said, Greg, there's no way you
can drill that whole. It's impossible. I said, Raul, Oh,
you're right. He said, God drilled that hole. God drilled
(10:15):
that hole, and I told him, see you better landal,
which means yeah. But I had a really good seat.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hangler. You've been listening to business
owner and Catholic Deacon Greg Hall and his story. In
my goodness, that quote from Augustin is just so dead
on right. Is right when no one is doing it. Wrong,
is wrong when everybody is doing it. The story of
(10:44):
Greg Hall, the story of so much more here on
our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories. The thirty three,
starring Antonio Banderis, recounts the extraordinary story of the twenty
ten Chilean mining disaster that buried thirty three miners twenty
three hundred feet underground for sixty nine days before their
unprecedented rescue. The world was riveted by the story, but
(00:32):
the name of the man whose plan and drilling equipment
made that rescue possible was never mentioned in the film.
His character is conflated with one of his employees, a
driller named Jeff Hart, played in the film by James Brolin.
And as you're about to hear, that's all right with
business owner and Catholic Deacon Greg Hall.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
You've all heard about it, the Chilean mine rescue, they
called There's been books written about it. There's a movie
out about it called The thirty three, where James Brolin
plays me, and it's amalgamation of myself and my driller. Now,
I will tell you to go see the movie. He's
much more cranky than I ever was. But I'm gonna
tell you the backstory that the books stn't have, that
(01:15):
the movies don't have. Before I start, I want just
to take a second, and I want you to think
about that person or persons who's most dear to you,
and imagine that the phone rings and the voice on
the other end tells you that that person is gone.
They don't know where they are, They don't know if
they live or die, They just know they're gone. That
(01:38):
was a phone call that went out in August of
twenty ten in the little bitty mining town in Copiapoltilli
called San Juan Mine. There had been an earthquake in
the mind and the walls had begun to shake and
the roofs to begin to collapse, and the people had
ran for their life. And when the dust settled there
were thirty three of their brothers unaccounted for. Didn't know
(02:00):
where they were. The phone calls went out to the families.
The phone call went out to the government. The government
ex immediately dispatched a team of commandos the ghosts try
to find the miners. One intrepid team was able to
repel down a ventilator's shaft down to four hundred meters
before finding the path blocked, so they knew if the
miners were alive, they were somewhere between four hundred meters
(02:23):
and eight hundred meters. That was the deepest shaft ever drilled.
So the government decided to take all the local drilling
rigs out there and get them on site and have
them start blindly punching holes hoping to find somebody. The
first problem they ran into is all the drilling rigs,
and there were nine available. They only carry enough equipment
to go four hundred and thirty meters. That's about as
deep as you go for a production hole in Chili,
(02:45):
And so they asked what was going on, and the
miners told them where there's a company called Petfoi Keipos
and Anto Fagasta, Chili that makes all our equipment and
they supply all our technical people call them. That's my
company that I started in nineteen ninety two, so they
called my manager there. I was in Cypress, Texas at
the time. I remember thinking as I heard the plans
to rescue them, six months nine months a year, and
(03:07):
I couldn't sleep at night. Everything I'd have tried to
develop showed it wouldn't work. All the computer moduling, all
the mathematic everything, trying to drill a half a mile
through solid granite a two foot hole without using liquids.
It can't be done. It can't be done. So I
finally told my team, well, the only answer, stop doing
(03:31):
stop doing the calculations, and let's go. The technical drilling
was even worse than I thought. But there was something
else that I didn't realize. The political situation we had
got into. You see, President Pinetta was a new president,
and they're very powerful people in Chile. So they quickly
decided if they could have a disaster to mine, that
(03:52):
Pinetta would fall and they could take over. So they
visited us and they offered me as much money as
I could have, contracts, anything I wanted. If I would
just leave, I was a hero, go a gringo. Just
let them stay here, but they'll die. Why did you care?
Pinetta will fall? And then, thinking back of it, I
(04:15):
know Jesus, but there was Satan showing all the riches
of the world. So I said no, and they said, well,
you understand that the chances of your failure are very big,
and if you fail, you may lose everything. If you
kill them, which is a possibility, you may never leave Chili.
One day, when we were having tremendously tough times, they
(04:38):
maneuvered a meeting with all the government where I had
to accept full responsibility for the job or we were finished.
And so I did that, and when I walked out,
I was very shaken because what did I gotten myself into.
It was lucky that it was time to pray the
Liturgy of the Hours. So I took my leturgy and
I actually went out in the desert with all It
(04:59):
was was desert to a junkyard. And I would tell
you that I was crying, but I can't because miners
we don't cry. But I was crying. But I started
to read the liturgy, and I'll never forget it. The
first psalm was Psalm sixty three, Oh God, you are
my God. For you, I long for you. My soul
is thirsty, like pining, like a dry, weary land without water. Man,
(05:22):
it just hit me. I said, you know, that same
Holy spirit's here, he's with us. We're gonna do this,
because as Augustine said, right is right even when no
one's doing it, and wrong is wrong even when everybody's
doing it. We're gonna do this. So I went back there,
and I won't tell you that everything went well. It didn't.
We fought the government was coming. The bad guys would
(05:44):
come and entice us with different things and different threads,
but we kept on going. By the time I got
out there, the drilling had started and they had chain
lead fences up and everybody's faces were pressed, all the
families pressed, and they had made a tamp called compost
Baranza camp Hope, and they wouldn't leave. So we started
drilling five days past, eight days past, ten days past.
(06:09):
Every now and then we would hit a little cavern
and we would send a camera down there. Nothing. We
started to think, when do we give up? When do
we quit? But all the families were there and they
held up signs, please don't leave my son down there.
And it say, it's funny because when I started talking
about it, I actually go back there and I get emotional.
(06:33):
That's just the way it is. I'll try not to
be too much, but I can remember the smells and
the people. But anyway, on day fifteen, we hit a
cavern and we heard tapping on the drill pipe. All
thirty three people were alive. They had been rationing. If
you go see the movie, it's very good showing the
valiant valor of the miners and their families. They were
(06:55):
surviving on almost no food, starting off with a little
half a cup of milk and a teaspoon tuna cutting
it down. On day ten, they cut it in half.
By the time we found them, they had no food
left and they were drinking out of radiators of some
machinery that was down there to stay alive when we
found them. So we found them. But as we kept
on drilling, one day, we were within one hundred meters
of the miners, and what happened is what all the
(07:18):
models showed. We got stuck a final time and we
couldn't get out. Our drill rig was maxed way overmaxed,
so overmaxed that the drillery manufacturers sent their top technician
to sleep on the rig with us because I had
everything about two hundred percent higher than it was allowed.
But you know, we were doing what we were doing,
(07:38):
but we were stuck, and everybody looked at me, and
there was nothing that I could do. We were finished.
And when you're stuck, and that kind of drilling, every
minute you're stuck, you're worse stuck. It doesn't get better.
And we were finished. But I remember thinking, and I
don't know how it popped into my mind, the Lord
works in mysterious ways. But bartimaeis popped into my mind. Bartimaeus,
(08:00):
you remember the blind guy. We're thinking, God, why is Barchi? Maeus?
Get you like, give me some blue oil or some
redded hair, or you know, Bartimaeus. But then I started
thinking about it. Do you remember the story of Bartimaus.
He was blind and he came up and he called Jesus,
(08:21):
and Jesus asked him a very simple question, what do
you want me to do? Whenever I used to read that,
I was thought, what a weird question. If I was Bartimaeus,
I said, what do you think? Take me skiing? I'm blind,
but I don't know what do you want me to do?
But you know something, it's an important question. And we
(08:43):
understand because Jesus had told the apostles when he washed
their feet, he said, I call you friend, and think
about what friends do? They talk to each other, they
have relationships. And so Bartimaeus had told him I want
to see, and Jesus said, you'll see. So I said it.
I said it very clearly on that drill rig I said, Lord,
(09:04):
I've done everything I could. I can do nothing else.
Those are your kids down there, not just my brothers.
You need to send your angels down and you need
to dig that bit out or we're finished. And really
they're finished. And I don't know how long I pray,
and I don't know if it was twenty minutes or
an hour. I have no idea. Time went crazy, but
(09:25):
the bit started to move and it can't the bit
cannot move. I have given over sixty talks all over
the world. And what's funny is when I talk to
a secular group, they'll come back and say, well, you know, Deacon,
you're renowned. Whether I am or not, you're renowned in
the world. Is an expert a drilling Tell me, really,
what happened? I say, God, move the bit. You don't
know what you're talking about. But God moved that bit
(09:51):
and we went down and we reached the miners and
we left. We made it. We decided we didn't want
to stay around till they came up. We didn't want
glory going home, and I was always leaving. One of
the head drilling engineers of South America he came up
to me and he said, Greg, there's no way you
can drill that whole. It's impossible. I said, Raul, Oh,
you're right. He said, God drilled that hole. God drilled
(10:15):
that hole, and I told him, see you better landal,
which means yeah. But I had a really good seat.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hangler. You've been listening to business
owner and Catholic Deacon Greg Hall and his story. In
my goodness, that quote from Augustin is just so dead
on right. Is right when no one is doing it. Wrong,
is wrong when everybody is doing it. The story of
(10:44):
Greg Hall, the story of so much more here on
our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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