Word: tunneling
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...cave-in shortly before the big blast and rockfall. Some 40 miners scrambled for the safety of the lift cage. Half were forced back at the cage entrance, reported the Post; 20 others reached the surface but found their way blocked by supervisors who ordered them back into the tunnel. Two natives who refused to go back were clapped into the mine's own jail on charges of insubordination, said the Post (and after the disaster were quietly released). Eighteen apparently persisted and found a side exit, for the Government Department of Mines last week announced that 18 natives...
...first rockfall had come 24 hours earlier, a cave-in far up No. 10's main tunnel. Everybody got out in time. When the dust settled, the miners went back in to clear the rubble with no particular fear, for ledoma (earthquake) is a commonplace to the natives who work the Rand and Free State mines. But then, without warning, the wall along the coal seam collapsed with a roar, and a gale-force gust of wind tossed men, machinery and pit props like feathers in its wake. Ventilation fans were smashed and behind the mile-long debris most...
Next morning, the repaired ventilators were pumping air back into the tunnel, but now the diggers were hampered by water, rising chest-high at the rock face. Grimly, nine foremen ordered the rescue teams out for fear they, too, might be trapped if the water-weakened shaft walls collapsed. Now the only hope was a special high-speed drill rushed down from the northern Transvaal 300 miles away to punch a 13-in. air and food hole straight down from the surface to the entombed men. But the drill hit solid rock 80 feet down, slowing...
...present plans, there would be no auto road; cars would be carried by rail because the cost of ventilating the tunnel for auto traffic would be too high. Despite the optimistic report, Kirkpatrick warned that there was at least an 18-month wait before anyone turned a shovel, because of the necessity of governmental approval...
Reaction to this latest Channel venture was mixed. "A wildcat scheme," cried Viscount Montgomery. Ignoring supersonic bombers and ICBMs, Britain's angry old field marshal added darkly that the tunnel would end "the inviolability of our island against the footsteps of an invader." To placate such critics, tunnel planners have included a dip at either end which could be flooded quickly to thwart invaders, pumped out later. The only cogent argument against construction of a tunnel, as the Times once commented, is that it would end the debate as to whether it ever was a good plan, "thus depriving...