Rescuers hit diamond-hard rock

A piece of the Sandstone-quartz rock excavated from the mine. Picture / Reuters

BEACONSFIELD - Nearly one kilometre below the ground, a diamond-hard layer of rock just one metre thick separates rescuers from trapped Tasmanian miners Brant Webb and Todd Russell.

Rescue crews inching their way towards the trapped pair are now using low-impact explosives to push the escape tunnel. Though progress is slow, the blasting overnight increased the chances the men would be rescued today.

Australian Workers Union national secretary Bill Shorten this morning said the trapped men were pleased to hear the sound of rock being blasted.

He said: "The vibrations are not proving to be a problem at the moment. The men now are happier to hear the noise because what the noise means is rescue and home."

The miners spent their 13th day underground intently watching the walls of their tiny rock sanctuary for any signs of movement.

Mr Webb, 37, and Mr Russell, 34, have been confined to a steel cage less than 2m square since an earth tremor collapsed tonnes of rock on them in the Beaconsfield gold mine on Anzac Day. Another miner, Larry Knight, 44, was killed.

Rescuers told Mr Shorten yesterday that jackhammers were about as useful as throwing Kleenex at the rock: "The rock is so hard that many efforts are like using a half-open pocketknife to chip away at it."

Others said that smashing it with a crowbar with all the force a miner could muster would not even leave a mark.

Now miners are drilling holes into the face, packing a gunpowder-like explosive called PCF into them and blasting: small explosions, but sufficient to break the rock and allow miners, working six-hour shifts in rotating teams of three, to chip away on their knees with drills weighing up to 40kg.

Mine manager Matthew Gill, clearly frustrated at the steel-hard barrier that is keeping rescue workers from breaking through, said it was unlikely the pair would be freed overnight.

Mr Gill would say only that it was "possible" rescuers would today break through into the cavity in which Mr Webb and Mr Russell survive at no more than a crouch.


They are exercising under a special regime to keep their muscles from serious harm and living on a diet designed to bring them from the dehydration and hunger that was afflicting them when they were found five days after the collapse.

Doctors still worry that their cramped accommodation could cause deep-vein thrombosis and that they could suffer from a range of other chest, liver and kidney conditions.

Yesterday, Mr Gill described their health as reasonable. "Their health is being continually monitored, as is their psychological health. Given the conditions that they're in and the duration [of their confinement] they are in reasonable health."

Mr Knight's family delayed his funeral until tomorrow in the hope that Mr Webb and Mr Russell would be able to attend.

The strain of the protracted rescue is beginning to tell.

On Saturday, after a week of painstaking and arduous work that if mishandled could have brought disaster to Mr Webb and Mr Russell as well as their rescuers, the main rescue tunnel was completed and hand-digging the final 1.5m across and 1.5m up had begun.

Rescuers and the people of Beaconsfield were confident that by sunrise yesterday the pair would be free and in the arms of their families.

Across from the mine gates, police had strung orange netting to form an avenue for the ambulances taking them to hospital in Launceston under police escort, marking out areas for the media and the public.

Miners planned to form a guard of honour; the town of Beaconsfield planned to party as never before.

By dusk the nearby park was bubbling, with laughing groups drinking beer from stubbies as their children frolicked on the grass and in the playground, braving the bitter cold of a front that was closing on Tasmania's northwest.

By 3am yesterday, buffeted by gusting wind and sheets of rain, the park was all but deserted. Crowds returned as the wind and rain eased during the day, but the mood had changed. For the moment, the party was over.

In the main street, outside the Uniting Church, where minister Frances Seen led locals in prayer for the trapped miners, the old church bell that was pulled from storage to announce their release with its first peals since the end of the Second World War remained silent.

She will ring the bell the moment Mr Webb and Mr Russell are freed from the mine.

"I've kicked my toe on it many a time and it'll be good to give it a bit of a rattle this morning or whenever it happens," she said.

"I'm going to ring that out with joy. It'll be a time of joy, but a time of sadness as we think of Larry."

Ms Seen said about 20 people visited the church last night.

"Oh well, we got the babysitter in for nothing," she recounted one parishioner as saying. "We'll go home to the kids now and be back again."

Ms Seen continued: "There were ex-miners there, and members of the fire brigade chatting about what had happened and what they were expecting to happen in the days to come."

No one now is under any illusions. Mr Webb and Mr Russell remain trapped, saved by a massive slab of rock that jammed above their cage and kept the rest of the collapse at bay.

They have a communication tunnel through which necessities, luxuries and comfort are passed.

They eat, sleep, exercise, keep each other from despair and banter with rescuers.

But their rescuers have hit a wall of rock five times as strong as driveway cement, impervious to jackhammers and absolutely deadly if mishandled.

By early afternoon yesterday they had carved a hole roughly 1m high, wide and deep.

Hours of backbreaking work remain - and if this method fails, others will need to be tried.

"Obviously there is a sense of frustration, particularly with those people who are working there at the face, with respect to the progress they are making," Tasmanian Resources and Economic Development Minister Bryan Green said after speaking with rescuers yesterday.

But Mr Gill said: "We are as confident as we can be, given that we're doing something that's quite unique."