The miner is sat with his head in his hands. His is covered in red, head to toe.
No point in the interviewer asking what happened. He’s been hearing what happened all evening from the other miners. The ones that survived.
They’ve been boring into the side of that mountain for a decade now. They’re about halfway through the construction of the tunnels. They knew they’d be passing through five distinct types of rock.There might be subterranean rivers. But nothing like this.
‘It shook the whole tunnel,’ says the miner, his words distorted. He’s been deafened, like the others. And it didn’t just shake the tunnel. It shook the whole mountain. Vibrations were felt as far as the villages on the other side.
‘The bore got stuck. When we rebooted it pushed through a pocket of pressure. That’s when it happened.’
The tunnel flooded with the liquid. They’re telling them it was oxidised iron mixed in with water, hence the smell and red colouring. But they all know what it was, even if they don’t want to believe it.
‘It… I think it screamed.’
‘We know,’ the interviewer writes on a pad.
But there’s one thing they don’t know. He writes it down for the miner.
‘Before you lost your hearing, what did it say?’
Paddy Dobson
5th June 2022