ABC News
2 Australian Miners Freed After 2 Weeks
Two Australian Gold Miners Are Rescued After Being Trapped 3,000 Feet Underground for Two Weeks
By RICK RYCROFT
BEACONSFIELD, Australia May 8, 2006 (AP) Two Australian gold miners trapped for two weeks in a tiny steel cage 3,000 feet underground were rescued early Tuesday by teams drilling round-the-clock by hand through hard rock.
Brant Webb, 37, and Todd Russell, 34, were buried after a small earthquake April 25 trapped them under tons of rock in the Beaconsfield Gold Mine. The safety cage they were working in kept them from being crushed. Fellow miner Larry Knight, 44, was killed.
Mine manager Matthew Gill said the men were safe and in good health after their 300-hour ordeal, underground in a cage too short to stand up in. Doctors were inspecting the men in an area still below ground before bringing them out of the mine.
For five days Webb and Russell survived on a single cereal bar and water they licked from rocks, until rescue crews with thermal heat sensors detected them.
Teams of specialist miners bored through more than 45 feet of rock over the past week with a giant drilling machine to reach the men. Cutting the final sections of the escape tunnel was been slow and difficult, as the men used hand tools to avoid causing a cave-in.
The rescue ends a drama that riveted the nation, with TV crews camped in the mine parking lot, and residents of the close-knit community waiting anxiously at the mine gates to welcome the two men, now considered heroes.
Television networks cut live to the news that the men were saved. A fire engine drove through Beaconsfield, a town in the southern state of Tasmania, its siren wailing to alert the local residents to the news.
A church bell not used since the end of World War II rang out in celebration.
"The great escape is over," union official Bill Shorten told Nine Network television. "A giant rock of presure has been taken off these families."
Seventeen men were working the night shift when the magnitude 2.1 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.
Location of Beaconsfield
The two miners who had been trapped almost one kilometer beneath the surface in Beaconsfield, Tasmania in a collapsed gold mine for 14 days have now been rescued.

The men, Brant Webb and Todd Russell, were well enough to walk out from the lift onto the surface and threw their arms up in exultation. They then walked to a board and removed their location tags to indicate that they were no longer underground at approximately 5:59 a.m. AEST before embracing family and friends and making their way to the waiting ambulances. The vehicles slowly made their way through the crowds with a police escort and the miners waved to the crowds through the open rear doors. They will undergo medical supervision at Launceston Hospital for a period of time before being confirmed well enough to return home.

The last stages of the rescue, cutting the final sections of the escape tunnel had proceeded very slowly because very hard rock was encountered and work had to proceed gently to minimize the chances of further rock collapses.

The escape tunnel was completed at 4:47 a.m. AEST and it took another hour for the men to be transported to the surface via a "crib room" at "Level 375" (375 metres underground) where they were medically examined and were also able to shower.

A bell at Beaconsfield's Uniting Church pealed just after 5 a.m. AEST to celebrate the rescue, and an air raid siren was sounded. This was the first time the church bell had been rung since the end of World War II. A local fire engine drove through Beaconsfield's streets sounding the siren to wake residents for the good news.

A funeral will be held later today for a third miner, Larry Knight, who was killed in the collapse that trapped the miners on April 26.