Beaconsfield, Australia ? Their head torches glowed in the pre-dawn darkness as the two men walked out of the mine. They punched the air in jubilation. Hundreds of people waiting to welcome them erupted in cheers.

This morning, Brant Webb, 37, and Todd Russell, 34, were free.

For two weeks they survived 3,000 feet underground in the Beaconsfield Gold Mine, trapped in a kennel-size steel cage under tons of rock loosened by a small earthquake.

Fellow miner Larry Knight, 44, was killed. But a huge slab of rock landed on the safety cage Webb and Russell had been working in, forming a roof that kept them from being crushed. Their rescue came hours before Knight’s family planned to hold his funeral.

For the first five days, the miners survived on a single cereal bar and water they licked from the rocks that had buried them. Their 4-foot-high cage was too small to stand in. Then search teams using thermal heat sensors located the men and launched a rescue mission that riveted the nation.

Television networks cut live to the news that the men were saved. A fire engine drove with its siren wailing through Beaconsfield, a town in the southern state of Tasmania. A church bell not used since the end of World War II rang out in celebration.

Joyful emergence

The miners bear-hugged family and friends before clambering into two ambulances, still laughing and joking. Before going, they removed their identity tags from the wall outside the elevator – a standard safety measure carried out by all miners when they finish a shift.

They also handed out small cards that read: “The Great Escape. To all who have helped and supported us and our families, we cannot wait to shake your hand and (buy) you a Sustagen,” referring to a nutrition drink the pair sipped during their ordeal. “Thanks is not enough.”

For Webb and Russell, the shift they started the night of April 25 lasted 300 hours.

Miners Todd Russell, left, and Brant Webb, second from left, emerge from the mine at Beaconsfield Gold Mine on Tuesday, May 9, 2006 in Beaconsfield, Australia. Two Australian miners who survived for two weeks in a kennel-size cage trapped nearly a kilometer (3,000 feet) underground walked out of the Beaconsfield Gold Mine early Tuesday and punched the air, freed by rescue crews drilling round-the-clock by hand.

Seventeen men were working when the magnitude 2.1 quake sent tremors through the century-old mine. Fourteen men made it safely to the surface. But Webb, Russell and Knight had been working deep in the pit repairing a tunnel.

Rescue crews searched for days for the missing men. On April 30, their sensors picked up Webb and Russell’s body heat. Two days later, they found Knight’s body.

First, the rescue team drilled a hole and forced a narrow PVC pipe through to the two miners, using it to feed them supplies including water, vitamins and fresh clothing. Comforts such as iPods, an inflatable mattress, egg and chicken sandwiches and even ice pops followed.

Painstaking work

All the while, teams of miners bored through rock with a giant drilling machine, forming a 45-foot escape tunnel directly under the cavity where the men were trapped.

They next had to tunnel three feet up to reach the men – the most painstaking part of the operation, because rescuers switched to hand drills to avoid a cave-in. One at a time they worked on their backs in the cramped tunnel, wielding hand-held pneumatic drills, diamond-tipped chain saws and jackhammers as heavy as 88 pounds.

Twelve inches of the crust was hard rock – five times harder than concrete – that took longer than expected to cut through. Delays in the rescue frustrated well-wishers waiting outside the mine, expecting the men to be free as early as Saturday.

But the rest of the crust was compacted debris, easier to cut through.

Starting at 4:47 a.m., the men crept one at a time out the cage and down into the narrow escape tunnel. Rescuers carried them through the tunnel on stretchers. A medical check of the men, still underground, found them in good health – able to stand on the elevator carrying them to the surface and to walk out of the mine.

The ambulances drove the men slowly out the mine gates with the doors open so crowds could see the two men who have become national heroes. Hundreds of townsfolk lined the streets, whooping, clapping and cheering as the vehicles passed en route to a hospital in nearby Launceston.