REDDING MINE DISASTER.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 49, Issue 15019, 5 October 1923, Page 5

REDDING MINE DISASTER.

SENSATIONAL RESCUE. AFTER TEN DAY’S’ TOIL. (Received Friday, 12.35 p.m.) LONDON, Thursday. Rescues are reported at Redding as the result of ten days’ gigantic toil, digging through the debris in the direction of the elevator pit known as Spion Kop. Here five men were found huddled together. They crawled out on all ’fours like frogs; all except one were in a comparatively good physical condition.

They kept themselves alive with water, and were cheered by the sounds of blasting and boring during the last four days. Four more bodies were also recovered.

The Redding survivors said that they tried to judge the passage of time by the growth of their beards. They only had half a slice of bread between them. The survivors, interviewed, said that their experiences were most trying. They used all their matches in the first two days in an attempt to keep a light burning which was impossible owing to the black damp. They crawled up and down in the darkness throughout the workings. They kept moving to keep warm, occasionally crawling to the edge of the water for a drink.

They wer e on. the verge of. despair when they heard a shot and crawled along the roadways trying to locate the direction. When the shots were repeated they shook hands with each other, confident of rescue. They were in the best of spirits. When reached their first request was for cigarettes. Restoratives and blankets were rushed to the spot, but the survivors insisted on crawling a long distance to the shaft bottom.

They were unablo to say whether other entombed men were alive. They were cut off from the others at the outset.

The rescued men occupied themselves underground with writing farewell letters in the darkness. They were soaked the first day wandering waist deep in water.

A huge crowd collected at the .pithead when the possibility of the rescues became known.

Desperate efforts were made to blast a passage to the entombed men whom many comrades refused to believe w r ere dead.

Suddenly those engaged in blasting heard thp murmur of distant 1 . voices. The rescuers, reinforced, worked feverishly and broke a way through falls of coal. The entombed men said that they were astounded to learn that they had been nine days below. When they first heard the blasting they crawled in all directions in darkness trying to locate the sound. The last food, a slice of bread, was divided on the third day. —Aus. and N.Z. Cable Assn.