Pieter Pieterse, Intermediate Life Support Paramedic, and Peet Laubscher, Basic Life Support Paramedic, Netcare 911 Gauteng, assisted in the evacuation of 2600 mineworkers trapped underground.
Pieter Pieterse & Peet Laubscher
Mine Evacuation
4 October 2007. Netcare 911 Intermediate Life Support Paramedic Pieter Pieterse received a call of a possible fatal disaster at a mine near Carltonville.
Within 45 minutes of taking the call, a combined team from two Netcare bases at Randfontein and Carltonville arrived at the mine where they were told that a ventilation pipe had fallen down the shaft, damaging power cables, cage cables and telecommunication wires. It also blocked the shaft in the first level below ground, trapping some 2600 people underground.
With no way to communicate underground, no one had any idea what was happening below and how many people were injured in the fall.
Mine management and engineering crews prepared a make-shift cage to be sunk down the dust shaft and the mine’s proto team – a special search and rescue squad without advanced medical training – was getting ready to be lowered into the deep.
Netcare 911 Paramedics Pieter Pieterse and Peet Laubscher, were the first medics to accompany the proto team down the dust shaft to inspect and assess the situation underground. Having reached the first level, Pieter and the proto team descended further down to inspect the lower levels with only headlamps to light their way.
The power cut also disabled water pumps and overflowing underground dams were discharging water down to the lower levels where a large number of people were still trapped.
Pieter and the proto team went further down the mine where they were met by panicked miners stampeding to get into the sublevel cages. Pieter helped to direct and escort frantic workers trapped on the lowest levels up to sublevel from where they could be moved to the surface.
On sublevel, Pieter and Peet treated workers for shock, hypothermia, abrasions, lacerations and other injuries associated with stampeding. Treatment conditions were difficult, with no electric lights amid the chaos until the mine could send in water, food parcels and a diesel generator to assist with the treatment and management of workers.
The emergency cage could only evacuate 30 people at a time, which in itself caused tremendous stress among the already traumatized 2600 strong workforce underground.
Pieter and Peet attended to the panic-stricken workers for nine hours and assisted in the evacuation of 1500 people. They were supported by fellow Netcare 911 paramedics Andrew Joubert, Gert Louw, Margery Henning and Shadrack Khoza.
For going the extra mile to save the lives of others, Pieter Pieterse and Peet Laubscher are deserving nominees in the Centrum® Guardian Project.
