The painstaking process of hoisting 33 miners trapped nearly a half-mile below ground for more than two months in northern Chile was completed Wednesday night, less than a day after it began, ending a saga that gripped a nation that never gave up hope.

"I hope this will never happen again," said the last man out of the gold and copper mine, shift foreman Luis Urzua, upon reaching the surface, as he was embraced by Chilean President Sebastian Pinera. "I'm proud of being Chilean."

Rescue worker Manuel Gonzalez -- the last person still in the mine -- was hoisted to the surface around 11:30 p.m. ET.

It was Urzua, 54, who first established contact with the outside world on August 22, 17 days after the mine collapsed on August 5, trapping him and his men.

It was Urzua who divided the cans of tuna that helped keep the men alive until they were discovered, and it was he who organized the 32 others into three work shifts.

It was he who pored over diagrams that helped rescuers plan the men's escape, and it was he who insisted on being the last of the trapped men to be freed.

"He was a shift boss who made us proud," Pinera told Chileans in a televised address afterward. "I want to thank the families of the miners who maintained faith -- this faith that ended up moving mountains."

"Mission accomplished, Chile," read a sign held by one of the six rescuers who had descended more than 2,000 feet to organize the men's exodus from the mine that collapsed August 5. The six were themselves hoisted out after the 33 miners had been extracted.

Pinera put the price of the rescue mission at $10 million to $20 million. "Every peso was well spent," he said.

And he criticized the mine, saying it "never should have functioned as it was functioning; it had a long history of violations."

He added, "I want to announce to the Chilean workers and the employers that we are going to make a new pact in which the life, dignity and protection of workers will be the focus of government concern."

Representatives of the owner, the San Esteban Mining Co., have said previously they will collaborate fully with Chilean authorities and the Chilean Congress in their inquiries about what went wrong at the mine.

After 69 harrowing days, the miners ascended to freedom one by one in a rescue mission that began in the numbing chill of a desert night, continued under the searing sun of a cloudless day and stretched back into the night.


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