Trapped Aussie miners freed after 2 weeks

Round-the-clock digging
Teams of miners bored through more than 45 feet of rock over the past week with a giant drilling machine to reach the men. But cutting the final sections of the escape tunnel was slow and difficult, as the men used hand tools to avoid causing a cave-in.

For 300 hours, the two miners had huddled in the 4-foot-tall cage until rescuers broke through the last crust of rock, five times harder than concrete. Rescuers could only work one at a time on their backs in the cramped tunnel, wielding hand-held pneumatic drills, diamond-tipped chain saws and jackhammers as heavy as 88 pounds.

Rescuer Glen Burns said miners finally broke through using chisels to open up a crack wide enough to see through. “And we just made eye contact, that was first, and then made that bit bigger and then shook their hands,” he said.

Television networks all carried live coverage of the climax of the men’s rescue and The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper published a special midday edition with a picture of the two miners emerging from the mine under a headline declaring: “Free at last.”

Seventeen men were working the night shift when the quake sent tremors through the century-old mine. Fourteen men made it safely to the surface, but Webb, Russell and Knight had been working deep in the belly of the mine repairing a tunnel.

Webb and Russell survived because a huge slab of rock landed on their safety cage, forming a roof that kept them from being crushed. For five days they lived on a single cereal bar and water they licked from rocks, until rescue crews with thermal heat sensors detected them April 30.

iPods and sandwiches
The rescue team forced a narrow pipe through a hole drilled through the rock and pushed through supplies including water, vitamins and fresh clothing. Comforts such as iPods, an inflatable mattress, egg and chicken sandwiches and even ice pops followed.

Throughout the rescue, the good spirits of the miners, both married with three children, amazed those struggling to reach them.

One man asked for a newspaper so he could start scanning the classifieds for another job. Another said that once freed, he wanted the ambulance to stop at McDonald’s on the way to the hospital.

The tense drama recalled the rescue in 2002 of nine miners from the Quecreek Mine in Pennsylvania after being trapped for 77 hours underground — less than a quarter as long as the Australian miners spent awaiting rescue.

Australia has a strong mine safety record compared with many other countries. After the deaths of 16 West Virginia coal miners earlier this year, U.S. labor leaders and experts held up Australia as a possible role model.

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