After the Resurrection

Hum

or in the face of adversity is something Australians regard as a national trait. And snippets of information that reached the public from the rescue mission at Beaconsfield gold mine, in northeast Tasmania, probably pumped more life into that notion. Miners Brant Webb, 37, and Todd Russell, 34, were trapped almost a kilometer underground when a small earthquake caused a rock fall in the mine on April 25. They spent five days entombed in darkness, with only a muesli bar to share between them, before rescuers using imaging equipment made the startling discovery that the pair were still alive. Webb and Russell were still trapped eight days later, when Time went to press, but in the meantime they apparently kept cracking jokes. Spokesmen relayed that Russell had asked for a newspaper to be sent down to him: he was keen to start looking for a new job. He was also expecting to be paid overtime for his extended shift. And both men wanted to be out in time to play for their local footy team on the Saturday.

Though the rescue effort was taking longer than anyone had expected, as workers resorted to low-powered explosives to break rock that had proved impervious to hand-held tools, it seemed by the morning of May 8 that Webb and Russell's freedom was imminent, perhaps a matter of hours away. In trying to predict how the miners' ordeal may affect them, medically, in the months and years ahead, it might pay to take little notice of the levity they showed in the midst of it. Sandy McFarlane, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Adelaide, suggests that to maintain the morale of rescuers and the miners' families, mine spokesmen emphasized the pair's lightheartedness, while gathered media lapped it up because it added color to what was already a remarkable tale of survival. "I wondered," McFarlane says, "whether the story we were getting was saying more about the state of mind of the journalists than of the miners." When you get buried alive, McFarlane adds, chances are there'll be long-term consequences for your health.

These aren't likely to be physical. When the pair were found to be alive on April 30—sitting in a small cage that had protected them from falling rock—there were fears that lack of water could have damaged their kidneys, while the cramped conditions may have caused potentially life-threatening pressure sores. But the men were sustained by water of doubtful quality that was trickling down the rocks, and had just enough room to stretch their legs, though not to stand. Rescuers used narrow piping to deliver clean water, protein drinks, vitamin tablets, clothes and lighting. As the task of drilling an escape tunnel through quartzite rock dragged on, they dispatched distractions such as magazines and music players. The miners bore injuries thought to amount to stiffness and minor cuts.

The issue now is to what extent the experience has psychologically scarred Webb and Russell. Several things are in their favor. As miners—without tendencies toward claustrophobia and with a fair idea of what the rescue effort unfolding above them would have involved—there's no doubt they coped better than would a desk-bound worker in a similar crisis. Also crucial was their having each other for company. In those grim days between the accident and contact with rescuers, "these men, I suspect, would have confided in each other things they'd never previously told anyone . . . that's what the fear of death does," says Beverley Raphael, who heads a University of Western Sydney unit specializing in mental health issues arising from disasters. And as married men and fathers of three, Webb and Russell would have been sustained, Raphael suspects, by what she calls "attachment ideation"—the instinct, under stress, to dwell on loved ones and a determination to see them again.

Though all these factors would have helped the pair stay calm while trapped, they may have little bearing on whether the men experience psychological ill effects in the future. "It wasn't in their interests to lose it [while they were underground]," says University of Queensland psychiatrist Brett McDermott, "but a lot of people, once they're in a safe place, experience a more intense emotional response." The danger for Webb and Russell is post-traumatic stress disorder, whose many and varied symptoms can take up to a decade to emerge. Relative levels of stoicism aren't pointers to the onset of this illness, which has its roots in the survival instinct common to all of us. "I've had several patients who've been buried alive," says psychiatrist McFarlane, "and it's an overwhelmingly intense experience. You might do everything you can to forget it, but the simplest things can revive the memory." Even a blanket on one's body can trigger the sensation of constriction and its frightening corollary, asphyxiation; darkness can become unbearable.

PTSD can manifest as alcoholism, disregard for one's health and deteriorating relationships. Nightmares may plague the miners, says disaster expert Raphael, as might survivor guilt connected with the death of their colleague, Larry Knight, 44, who was operating the machine to which Webb and Russell's cage was attached. And while their ordeal could yield lucrative media deals, they'll have to come to grips with forever being known as the two blokes who were stuck in the mine. When hauled out of the darkness, Webb and Russell will face a new world.