By CARLY CRAWFORD
The Sunday Mail (Australia)
The Beaconsfield Mine rescue effort is unprecedented in complexity and scale in Australia, rescue workers say.
Experts who have worked to bring Brant Webb and Todd Russell to safety believe the magnitude and duration of the marathon retrieval is unparalleled in the history of Australian disaster rescue.
For the past six days, a team of eight paramedics, plus three supervisors, has worked rotating shifts of at least 12 hours.
Professional miners with special skills from around Tasmania and NSW have also been on hand.
Tasmanian Ambulance Service superintendent Wolfgang Rechberger said the courageous miners had played a vital role in their own rescue.
“We were in a sense helping them rehabilitate themselves, while they were underground,” Mr Rechberger said. “They have been part of their own rescue.”
The depth and scope of the retrieval was like none other he had experienced — carried out in cramped, dangerous spaces a kilometre beneath the earth.
“It’s been a very difficult one, I don’t recall a rescue like this anywhere in Australia. It’s been compared to Thredbo, but it’s not really anything like that.
“These men survived five days before they were even found. I don’t recall anything like it where someone has been trapped for this amount of time or so far underground.
“I believe it could be unprecedented in Australia.”
The delicate freedom bid began last Sunday night, when rescuers first made contact with the men by voice.
Once the sounds of life were confirmed, an elaborate rescue plan was hatched.
Rescuers burrowed a channel to the men, through which they passed them food, clothes and messages of comfort from their families.
The best machinery — a special drill called a raise borer, which gently chews through hard rock - was sourced and assembled to gain access to the men.
By 8pm Thursday, drilling of the 16m freedom tunnel was under way.
By then, the miners had been furnished with camping mats for comfort and iPods and magazines for entertainment.
“Working with people that you can’t actually see and getting them to, in a sense, help themselves so you can assess them is the biggest challenge,” Mr Rechberger said.
Psychologists barred communication between the men and their families.
“We need them to focus on what they’re doing, we don’t want to make them homesick, we need them to focus on what’s going on.”
Friday brought slow but steady progress in the drilling — by 8.30pm the tunnel was 11.5m long.
The final 4m was to be burrowed last night, with the last half a metre to be excavated using hand tools, including a pneumatic drill.