The trapped Beaconsfield Miners
It will only be people who live in relative isolation who have not heard of the plight of two miners, Brant Webb and Todd Russell, who are trapped in a mine in Beaconsfield, Tasmania, more than a mile underground. Even Foo Fighter, Dave Grohl has sent best wishes and an offer to meet the men for a beer, “any where, any time”.
The two miners today start their 12th day of confinement in the mine tunnel after a rock fall caused the collapse of the mine tunnel on Anzac Day. The rock fall claimed the life of their colleague Larry Knight, but Webb and Russell were saved by the steel cage they were working in and have been trapped in the cage ever since.
Australia’s media outlets have been consumed by the rescue, with hour by hour coverage of the slow progress to construct a tunnel paralell to the collapsed tunnel in order to rescue the men. Radio, TV and print media are full of stories from next door neighbors, local officials, the local store owner, friends of the men………….in fact anyone they can get to talk about the men in order to gain an “edge” in their coverage.
The families of Webb and Russell were jubilant when the men were found alive and were speaking freely to the media, until the days began to pass without the men being rescued. They have now “gone to ground” and who can blame them?
Stories of camera crews filming over back fences, sneaking around the town trying to get a ’scoop’ abound. Every ‘direct cross’ to Beaconsfield shows the huge media contingent which far outstrips the population of this small rural Tasmanian town. The newspapers carry speculative stories about how much television networks are ‘bidding’ to secure the exclusive story of the miners once they reach the surface.
In the meantime, two men are still a mile below the surface of the earch, confined in a small space and although they now have received food, blankets and MP3 players, they still live with the fear that their rescue may actually result in a further rock fall which could still cause their deaths.
It all makes me wonder………….when does news coverage mutate and become ‘voyarism’? When did the suffering of others become entertainment for the rest of us?
I can’t help but think of those two men, cold, dirty and scared beyond our capacity to imagine………….every minute could be their last………..one wrongly placed explosive could see the end of the rescue mssion and the beginning of a retrieval mission.
I can’t help think about their wives, children and parents, trapped in their own homes while marauding media pace the boundaries of their homes.
I can’t help but think of the towns people whose lives have been turned upside down and whose futures look bleak as the main employer in the town and source of jobs and prosperity (the mine) will be certainly NOT survive the accident.
I can’t help but think of the paramedics and mine rescuers, themselves friends and colleagues of the trapped men, tired, anxious and trying to perform in a professional way when they know how very high the odds are.
I can’t help but think of the family of Larry Knight………..they have delayed his funeral until Webb and Russell are rescued so that they can attend, but this will not be a rescue for them. Their son, husband and father is not coming back, they know this, but will be hoping and praying that his friends will be rescued.
All of this pain, all of this stress, all of this emotion and saddness in a town whose population is not much more than 1300. A town flooded by media, who when this is all over will pack up their cameras, their scaffold and their lights and go back home to the big cities and on to the next story.
What will be left for Beaconsfield? The trauma of a mining accident. The death of ‘one of their own’. The financial collapse of the major employer in the region and a population who will all suffer, in their own way, from post traumatic stress, not least of which will be Webb and Russell who will take years to make any sense of their experience………..if their rescue is successful.
So on this cold, wet Sunday morning, my thoughts are with the people of Beaconsfield……………..their healing journey will be a very long one and they will all need as much support as we can offer them, particularly once the eyes of the world turn to the next big news story and they are forgotten.