TWO MEN ENTOMBED.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 6450, 22 February 1908, Page 10

TWO MEN ENTOMBED.

LANDSLIP AT NGAHAUBANGA. PROVIDENTIAL ESCAPE. Two men named John Ditchings and Diehard Duignan, while working on the railway duplication works on the Hutt-WclLington line, wore entombed for a time yesterday afternoon owing to a fall of earth. Prompt measures wero taken, to rescue the men, who had a fortunate escape, emerging uninjured. The quarry the men wore employed on is one of several along the face of the dill near Ngahauranga, and is about two hundred yards on the city side of Ngahauranga railway station. The face is very steep, and the top has been worked so as to form a good batter. Tiies© drives are timbered, iind are only largo enough for a dray to back into; the horse hitched to the dray remaining on clb* road, or partly so. The timber is built up and backed with manuka in bundles, so as to prevent the spoil being eent down from the face over the shoot into tlie road. The roof of the drive is built on railway iron, there is a slidingdoor in the loaf, and a man releases this door to fill the dray, standing in the drive in order to do so. This is not a dangerous job unless the ground slips. The most dangerous work apparently is done at the top of the face, and each man has alongside him a rope made fast to a bar in the , gum mat of the clifl.

The drived’ of the dray may b© inside or outsddo tjio drive. Fortumatoly, Duignan was inside. . A mass of loose mullock slipped from the lower portion of the batter, covering the men, the horse, and dray. Inspector Bee, who was on the spot, concluded that one man at least was inside the drive, and his first work was to put in an airshaft to connect with the drive. The msn inside, of course, had no idea of the size of the fall or the prospects of rescue, and it says something for Hatchings that, finding his mat© was covered up, he dug him out in the darkness and pulled him inside the drive. They were boxed up for half-an-houT, and when rescued—fifty men were shovelling all they knew—neither was scratched. The gang of men were cleaning the road up to dark last night, and the Telegraph Department was impairing wires which had bean broken by the fall. About a hundred yards of mullock: fell. The horse belonged to Mr D. Kavanagh, and is said to be worth ICO. Ail the ground in the vicinity of this slip is seamed, and may therefor© prove treacherous. The men owe their lives possibly to the strength of the railway irons in the roof of the drive, the fact that the fall was but from a short distance, and to the prompt measures taken by Inspector Lee and his men to put in an air-shaft and ultimately to remove the .spoil. All the ground wa.s loose, and there were few large stones.