A rescue operation that was supposed to last a few days is now over. Seventeen days after a tunnel under construction collapsed in the Indian Himalayas, the 41 miners trapped inside are free. 

Two different drilling machines broke before a team of miners used a technique called rat-hole mining – so dangerous it was outlawed in 2014 – to at last get through. It is as unpleasant as it sounds, navigating tight spaces with only a hand drill. But “when we saw them inside the tunnel after the breakthrough,” one rescuer said, “we hugged them like they were family.”