May. 7th, 2006
Metre by metre
May. 7th, 2006 08:47 pmThe drama at Beaconsfield is still going on. Slowly. Tomorrow, they're saying. Hopefully tomorrow.
It's been interesting from a number of angles. The use of technology (infra-red to find the missing miners were still alive, providing them with digital cameras to take photos of where they were, iPods for entertainment, the actual drills being used in the process). The interactions between rescuers, support staff & the two miners. How the media focus, the hundreds of sudden visitors, is affecting the town and the residents, especially the children. What the effect on the town will be afterwards (whether the mine will continue).
For those that haven't had the benefit of almost hourly updates :) the rescue procedure went something like this:
First they brought in a bore drill, which first had to have a cement base put down for it. This bored a tunnel about 16 m long and 1 metre wide to within 3 metres of where the men are trapped. It's 1.5 m below and 1.5 metres away from the area. Although they now think it might not be so far up.
Then, one at a time, a miner had to crawl along this tunnel and drill through rock, with a hand drill that weighed something like 35 kilos. This was the point they got to last (Saturday night).
Come this morning, they'd found the rock was too hard for the hand drill (it's about 5 times as hard as cement) so they started to use low grade explosives. By late morning, they'd progressed half a metre. At midday, they'd progressed a metre.
On the 3.30 pm news update, there was a bit of a shock. A very prominent journalist.
The last news update I've seen/heard was at 7.30 pm.
It's been interesting from a number of angles. The use of technology (infra-red to find the missing miners were still alive, providing them with digital cameras to take photos of where they were, iPods for entertainment, the actual drills being used in the process). The interactions between rescuers, support staff & the two miners. How the media focus, the hundreds of sudden visitors, is affecting the town and the residents, especially the children. What the effect on the town will be afterwards (whether the mine will continue).
For those that haven't had the benefit of almost hourly updates :) the rescue procedure went something like this:
First they brought in a bore drill, which first had to have a cement base put down for it. This bored a tunnel about 16 m long and 1 metre wide to within 3 metres of where the men are trapped. It's 1.5 m below and 1.5 metres away from the area. Although they now think it might not be so far up.
Then, one at a time, a miner had to crawl along this tunnel and drill through rock, with a hand drill that weighed something like 35 kilos. This was the point they got to last (Saturday night).
Come this morning, they'd found the rock was too hard for the hand drill (it's about 5 times as hard as cement) so they started to use low grade explosives. By late morning, they'd progressed half a metre. At midday, they'd progressed a metre.
On the 3.30 pm news update, there was a bit of a shock. A very prominent journalist.
The last news update I've seen/heard was at 7.30 pm.