Miners Saved! - Spectacular Rescue Effort Pays Off
Category: HNN Broadcasted on 15. January 2003 - 15:56:58hrs Author HNN News Reporter Comments: 0
After spending a full day trapped in darkness hundreds of meters below the earth, with fresh air running low, six Hapan miners were hauled up to safety today, and into the tearful embraces of their loved ones. Exhausted rescue workers heaved sighs of relief after working tirelessly through the night, smiling as they watched the equally exhausted and dust-covered miners reunited with their families.
“We just kept hoping you fellas on the surface would come through for us,” said Thalit Gunthree, one of the miners who survived the ordeal, “So we just tried to keep calm down there in the dark, breathe slowly to conserve our air, and all that. They prepare you for this kind of thing in training, but you never expect it to actually happen.”
Once the Royal Engineering Corp and associated rescue units managed to drill down into the section of tunnel in which the miners were trapped, a slender one-person rescue tube was lowered into the shaft and brought up the miners one by one. Only one of the miners had been minorly injured during the cave-in, and he was the first to be sent up to the surface, where doctors quickly treated his broken ankle and declared him otherwise healthy.
Preliminary reports as to the cause of the cave-in seem to indicate that an unexpected tremor from a nearby fault line caused a weakening of large slabs of rock along the tunnel’s ceiling. “It’s the kind of thing that you can’t possibly anticipate,” said the mining company’s chief geological expert, “Our tunnel supports are constructed to sustain incredible stresses, but when the geological situation changes so drastically we can’t predict the results. Fortunately this sort of thing happens only very rarely.” Safety inspectors are convinced that this is an isolated accident that the mining company could have done little to prevent, and it’s fortunate that no lives were lost, thanks to the rapid response by rescue personnel.
- Jaeld Alteir
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