Speaker 1: We'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land
Speaker 1: on which this podcast was produced, the Galligall people of
Speaker 1: the Urination. We pay our respects to Elder's past and present.
Speaker 2: It's November twenty twenty three and the world's detention is
Speaker 2: fixed on the towering Himalayas in northern India. A landslide
Speaker 2: has thus caused part of a tunnel to collapse, trapping
Speaker 2: forty one workers for seventeen days. These men are cut
Speaker 2: off from the outside world, their survival hanging by a thread.
Speaker 2: Enter Arnold Dix. Arnold is no stranger to disasters. He's
Speaker 2: worked on emergencies as complex as the Twin Towers collapse
Speaker 2: and the London bombings, but this is different. Called in
Speaker 2: to oversee the rescue mission, Arnold brings a unique mix
Speaker 2: of expertise. He's a geologist, engineer, lawyer, and risk stress.
Speaker 2: Just bearded, calm and clad in hives, Arnold radiates confidence
Speaker 2: to a watching world. He makes a bold promise.
Speaker 3: There's forty one men coming home and there's no one
Speaker 3: else going to be hurt, and that's the mission.
Speaker 4: Mission mission.
Speaker 2: Over seventeen suspenseful days, Arnold leads one of the most
Speaker 2: remarkable rescue missions in recent memory. He battles an unforgiving
Speaker 2: mountain and brings every man out alive. The result a
Speaker 2: victory that has made Arnold Dix a household name, not
Speaker 2: just in India but across the globe. I'm at Middleton
Speaker 2: and this is Headgame today, the story of a man
Speaker 2: who brought together science, leadership, and a touch of humility
Speaker 2: to achieve the impossible. Mister Arnold Dix, how are you, buddy?
Speaker 2: How's life treating you?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well, and I'm feeling good and life's treading me very well.
Speaker 3: And I'm alive and yeah, I'm literally living the dream
Speaker 3: like it's fantastic.
Speaker 2: Alive and kicking as I.
Speaker 4: Said, Yeah, absolutely, And.
Speaker 2: That's ultimately what you do. You keep people alive and kicking. Now,
Speaker 2: Arnold is literally a life saver. Donold, how was your upbringing?
Speaker 2: Talk to me about your upbringing and were you always
Speaker 2: interested in exploring in caves and tunnels and how does
Speaker 2: that come?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm just a hotel keeper's kid, and so
Speaker 3: in Australia, you know, my parents would go from hotel
Speaker 3: to hotel and so place to place, and it meant
Speaker 3: I was exposed to different people, different places, different just
Speaker 3: different stuff. And it made me a bit of an adventurer.
Speaker 3: So I'm interested in everything alive. I'm interested in everything
Speaker 3: in Jineer. I'm interested in from a very early age, rocks,
Speaker 3: which seemed a bit weird as a kid. And yeah
Speaker 3: that's my early upbringing. Nothing flashy in my family, nothing
Speaker 3: flashy with me as a student, in fact, a remedial
Speaker 3: student early on, and as really get very basic Aussie upbringing.
Speaker 3: And yeah, so that's me, Like, there's nothing remarkable, you know,
Speaker 3: just that I'm sure.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there is. And I'm going to coax out
Speaker 2: of you, nd I'm sure there's something in there. As
Speaker 2: a child, you say, you know, he used to like rocks.
Speaker 2: We all do as kids, you know. I think back
Speaker 2: in you know, in our era. And I say that
Speaker 2: because you know, technology wasn't a thing. But back then,
Speaker 2: you know, we didn't have phones. We didn't have iPads,
Speaker 2: We certainly didn't have mobile phones. We used to be
Speaker 2: out and about, didn't we pick up locks used to
Speaker 2: fascinate me. I used to pick up some rocks and
Speaker 2: I used to compare them with others. I used to
Speaker 2: have a look at it to see if there were
Speaker 2: any diamonds in there. You know, just this the thing
Speaker 2: that you do as kids. So did that really spark
Speaker 2: your interest to become to take it as a career.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think that is that that real excitement
Speaker 3: as a kid, like could there.
Speaker 4: Be a diamond in it? Is there gold in it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: And around where I lived so different different places of
Speaker 3: their old minds, so of course you went and tried
Speaker 3: to get into the old minds. When I got to
Speaker 3: about I think grade four, I was up in the
Speaker 3: mountains of Australia called Snowy Mountains, a lot of tunnels
Speaker 3: up there, with a snowy scheme and a lot of
Speaker 3: old blokes getting drunk and happy to take a kid
Speaker 3: under their shoulder to show them what they did, you know,
Speaker 3: a few years ago.
Speaker 4: So rocks. There's also a link between me and the.
Speaker 3: Old timers, like, come here, young fellow, I'm going to
Speaker 3: share a thing or two. And that was Yeah. I
Speaker 3: think that influenced me a lot. And there was I
Speaker 3: suppose a quirky thing as well. Those old timers were
Speaker 3: mostly refugees from post Second World War Europe, and you'd
Speaker 3: get like an old German guy who literally was X
Speaker 3: S S or something, and he talked to you like, well,
Speaker 3: the lady I work with in the kitchen, so I
Speaker 3: used to do breakfasts and she would talk to me
Speaker 3: about going to the rallies with Adolf and what it
Speaker 3: felt like. Wow, And you're like, I'm just a little kid,
Speaker 3: like I'm just running breakfast trace and instead of watching
Speaker 3: the World at War on TV, I've got and I
Speaker 3: remember her name with Missus Kluger was her name, And
Speaker 3: she'd tell me stories of war, the you know, Second
Speaker 3: World War Germany. And so that combined with the men
Speaker 3: showing me the tunnels a very rich and unusual sort
Speaker 3: of environment to grow up in.
Speaker 2: I can imagine. Did that really coax you into into
Speaker 2: wanting to, you know, go into a career and into
Speaker 2: further education to study.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: I just like learn and stuff and I like doing stuff,
Speaker 3: and so the combination drew me to practical sorts of things.
Speaker 3: So geology mining engineering is the first thing I do.
Speaker 3: And that's cool because you get to do sort of
Speaker 3: nature stuff but in extreme environments. And so you can
Speaker 3: travel to these amazing locations and then get involved with
Speaker 3: really amazing machines, meet characters because in the mining area
Speaker 3: you meet all sorts of interesting personality disorders, which is
Speaker 3: wonderful thing preparing you for the future, and they combine
Speaker 3: well with all the characters in the hotel. So I've
Speaker 3: always really enjoyed being a child, and I hope I
Speaker 3: never stopped being a child, but a child in a
Speaker 3: grown ups world and just watching how all the different
Speaker 3: characters and personalities come together to form groups and how
Speaker 3: they do stuff together, and that's really fascinating.
Speaker 2: And what a combination as well, geology and engineering You've got.
Speaker 2: You know, you've got the fascination of how the earth
Speaker 2: is you know, is created, or how the earth you know,
Speaker 2: fits together, and then that side of being able to
Speaker 2: sort of dismantle it and have a look at it
Speaker 2: and you know, explore it in its entirety is a
Speaker 2: fascination combination.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 3: And you, because you're doing the mining, you suddenly realize
Speaker 3: that the earth is alive, so it's not so rocks
Speaker 3: instead of being the e static things that you look
Speaker 3: at and maybe something you throw on a pond or
Speaker 3: at a friend or maybe at an enemy instead of
Speaker 3: just as a weab. You start to learn that they
Speaker 3: they're alive, and they move and they bend, and they
Speaker 3: can be plastic, and they can be elastic, and they
Speaker 3: can fracture and they can explode, and they can all
Speaker 3: do all of that in five minutes on your head
Speaker 3: if you're not watching. And so suddenly what began as
Speaker 3: a childlike fascination with rocks ends up being, Oh my god,
Speaker 3: the world is alive, this this underground world, and these
Speaker 3: mountains are moving, and and to do the sorts of
Speaker 3: things that I end up doing, I have to be
Speaker 3: really sensitive to this very dynamic, very amazingly not.
Speaker 4: What you think a rock would be like, Hello, I'm
Speaker 4: a rock. I do nothing.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, These rocks are like, hey, Arnold, have
Speaker 3: I got some surprises for you today?
Speaker 4: So, yeah, it's fascinating.
Speaker 2: So you finished education and when when do you? Because
Speaker 2: you've been on multiple let's call them rescues or whether
Speaker 2: it's mines, whether it's caves, tunnels, you've been on when
Speaker 2: was your first call? And did you ever think that
Speaker 2: you wanted to go down that road of rescuing people
Speaker 2: or did someone to say, hey, this guy knows you
Speaker 2: know absolutely everything about about tunnels and geology and engineering.
Speaker 2: Let's let's give him a call.
Speaker 4: Nah.
Speaker 3: So actually I've never rescued anyone alive before, you see.
Speaker 4: That's so this is part of the twist in all
Speaker 4: of this.
Speaker 3: So normally when I get called in, everyone dies, and
Speaker 3: often some of us do as well, And so my
Speaker 3: job is to although of course we'd like to save people,
Speaker 3: despite what's in the newspapers, despite what's in the movies,
Speaker 3: normally everyone's dead.
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 3: I'm really I'm more about Yes, I come and we
Speaker 3: try and learn what's gone wrong. But normally people come
Speaker 3: out in bags. And in fact, in my book, I
Speaker 3: can't remember exactly the words I use, but I say,
Speaker 3: that's perhaps my biggest lie.
Speaker 4: That's my lie.
Speaker 3: By omission, I never told anyone I'd never managed to
Speaker 3: rescue anyone alive before.
Speaker 4: See why.
Speaker 3: I promised that we would rescue forty one people, and
Speaker 3: I promised that none of us were going to get hurt.
Speaker 3: But the fact is I've never done that before, because
Speaker 3: it never ends that way for me ever, not one wow. Okay,
Speaker 3: So I'm not that guy who says, somehow, rather good
Speaker 3: fortune follows me and somehow, rather I perform miracles, you know, somehow,
Speaker 3: Rather if you get me it's going to end differently.
Speaker 4: I'm not that guy. I'm actually more like the grim Reaper.
Speaker 3: And I suspect that's why no one had ever heard
Speaker 3: of me, because, you know, because no one who wants
Speaker 3: who wants to know about all the people who are dead,
Speaker 3: who wants to know about all the reasons for it.
Speaker 2: Let's go straight into it with with with India. Where
Speaker 2: are you at the time when when you get the call.
Speaker 3: I'm actually in Slovenia and I'm slightly involved in trying
Speaker 3: to work out some alternative rail links, freight rate rail
Speaker 3: links between Asia.
Speaker 4: And Europe because of the war in Ukraine.
Speaker 3: And so because Russia is no longer a path, try
Speaker 3: to work out, you know, we bring maybe bring the
Speaker 3: freight around with a different course actually down through the least.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And so I get the call from India's chief engineer,
Speaker 3: Raju Raul Gupta, and he tells me what he's got,
Speaker 3: and he asks me for my advice.
Speaker 2: And what did he tell you he had? Because I
Speaker 2: know that you're not shy or you're used to getting
Speaker 2: this information, but yeah, this one was was a pretty
Speaker 2: big one. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, what was really different about this one is he
Speaker 3: said at the time, he said he had forty live
Speaker 3: ones inside a tunnel and there'd been a collapse. The
Speaker 3: zoner collapse was in the order of one hundred meters.
Speaker 3: The mountain was still moving. They're experiencing earthquakes. It seemed
Speaker 3: to be in a very poor geological zone. Did I
Speaker 3: have any thoughts? And he couldn't show me any images.
Speaker 3: So I said, hey, can you get me some pictures?
Speaker 3: And so he jumped in a helicopter, went up, and
Speaker 3: about a day or so later, came back to me
Speaker 3: with some images and it looked pretty bad, and so
Speaker 3: I said, like, look, I gave him my thoughts. This
Speaker 3: is all on WhatsApp. By the way, this is an
Speaker 3: It's not like some fan. It's like, hey, Arnold. Then
Speaker 3: he says, can you talk to a colleague of mine,
Speaker 3: and he sort of pans the phone around. There's another
Speaker 3: guy in the room and he's advised of the Prime
Speaker 3: Minister of India, and he said, just tell me that again.
Speaker 3: I said, well, this is what I reckon, blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: And then they just said could you come and give
Speaker 3: us a hand?
Speaker 2: Like that's just just just as simple as that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think part of the surprise for that
Speaker 3: too is so there's no contract, there's no there's no money.
Speaker 3: I mean, so there's no description of what I got
Speaker 3: to do, there's no description of what I can't do.
Speaker 3: All they asked is could I come and give them
Speaker 3: a hand? And so I made my way to India
Speaker 3: and ended up in you just.
Speaker 2: Drop everything, just go right, yeah, I'm just going to
Speaker 2: drop tools and a way I go.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I just mobilized, went there and on the way. Yeah,
Speaker 3: just by myself, yep, yeah, yeah, yeah, just just went
Speaker 3: there and they were waiting for me. They had to
Speaker 3: like the helicopter bit, like you know, the Rambo movies.
Speaker 3: And so I find myself up in the Himalayas and
Speaker 3: now I'm part of this amazing team of people who,
Speaker 3: by the time I get there, are feeling sad and
Speaker 3: we're losing hope because it had been a few days
Speaker 3: and they had to sort of officially had press conferences
Speaker 3: and told everybody that the workers would be out but
Speaker 3: quickly blah blah blah, but they weren't. And also the
Speaker 3: machinery they were using had failed, and so things were
Speaker 3: looking pretty grim when I got there.
Speaker 2: What were they asking you to do. And how was
Speaker 2: were they caught in a tunnel, were they caught in
Speaker 2: a cave? What was the situation because obviously they were workers, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: So you've got forty one young men probably lied about
Speaker 3: their ages because they're from very poor villages, so they're
Speaker 3: they're working. They've come from all around India to be
Speaker 3: construction workers in a tunnel. The tunnel is being built
Speaker 3: for the pilgrims, the Hindu pilgrims, to avoid having to
Speaker 3: go across the Himalayas and go through the mountains to
Speaker 3: get to their temples. And the situation when I arrived
Speaker 3: was there's about one hundred meters of internal collapse inside
Speaker 3: the tunnel, so now it's completely blocked. There's a chimney
Speaker 3: of collapse rising up through the center of the mountain.
Speaker 3: So we're getting aggressive collapse crowding a huge cavity up
Speaker 3: through the center of the mountain.
Speaker 4: There's like a.
Speaker 3: Shear zone running along. Unfortunately the roof of the tunnel
Speaker 3: and the shear zone is moving. So the data we
Speaker 3: had from our survey and our lighter data was showing us.
Speaker 4: That the thing's moving.
Speaker 2: And what's a shear zone.
Speaker 3: Shear zones when one rock is no longer one, but
Speaker 3: actually he's now got a big cut through it, and
Speaker 3: the whole thing moves along the cut like a bit
Speaker 3: like a fault or something. So and as you found,
Speaker 3: because you're a plucky gosh, you know better than me
Speaker 3: as a climber that mountain. People think the Himalayas is
Speaker 3: really tough rock, and it's not. It's really weak twisted,
Speaker 3: soft yeah, soft rock. And so this soft rock is
Speaker 3: collapsing and they're experiencing minor earthquakes. There was progressive collapse occurring.
Speaker 3: And so the feeling, and I know that's maybe odd
Speaker 3: by putting it, but the feeling there they were losing hope.
Speaker 3: So and because I had no instructions, because I was
Speaker 3: trying to really sensitize myself to like what can I
Speaker 3: do here? Like do they want me on dishes? I
Speaker 3: can do dishes if they want, you know, do they
Speaker 3: want me on what do they want me to do?
Speaker 3: I realized I had a really important role to play,
Speaker 3: and the role was to make everybody believe that we
Speaker 3: could do it. And that's the promise. See, I stepped
Speaker 3: in and I put my whole reputation on the line
Speaker 3: and I promised that forty one men are going to
Speaker 3: come home and that none of us are going to
Speaker 3: get hurt. And yet no one asked me if i'd
Speaker 3: have done it before, because I hadn't, And I gave
Speaker 3: a time frame, and I said it with all my
Speaker 3: heart and all my conviction, because for some reason I
Speaker 3: believe that we could, And with that belief that we could,
Speaker 3: somehow that infected the team and somehow, because you've got
Speaker 3: me there saying unequivocably, we will save forty one men
Speaker 3: and none of us are going to get.
Speaker 4: Hurt by Christmas.
Speaker 3: I promise you, Yeah, I said, I promise, Like in
Speaker 3: the book, I've got QR codes down the back where
Speaker 3: I've actually got the TV interviews all from India, so
Speaker 3: they're all coming off the TV channels where I'm standing there,
Speaker 3: poker faced in front of one point four billion people,
Speaker 3: promising them that we're going to rescue all the men
Speaker 3: and none of us are going to get hurt, using
Speaker 3: the words I promise, wow.
Speaker 2: Wow, and Arnold when you when you when you got
Speaker 2: there and you just talk about you know the feeling,
Speaker 2: you know, did you think to yourself? Right, I'm going
Speaker 2: to tell them this Was it a pre a preempted
Speaker 2: sort of statement, or did you hit the ground you
Speaker 2: said about that fear, you know, when you hit the
Speaker 2: ground and you feel either this is going to work
Speaker 2: out or we can do Did you feel that positivity?
Speaker 2: Did you feel that you know, that reassurance of the
Speaker 2: situation to be able to deliver that statement in that moment,
Speaker 2: or was it something that you thought is a technique
Speaker 2: I'm going to use to breed positivity, to breed hope
Speaker 2: so we can get this job done as fast and
Speaker 2: as efficiently as possible. Or was it did you hit
Speaker 2: the ground and go, do you know what? Wow? Because
Speaker 2: I get that sometimes I go, I feel good here,
Speaker 2: we're going to do this. We're going to do this.
Speaker 3: That's exactly what it is. And I felt it. I
Speaker 3: felt it on the plane on the way there, and
Speaker 3: I knew even before I got there that we were
Speaker 3: going to be able to do this, even though I've
Speaker 3: never done it before. Right, Yeah, I felt we could
Speaker 3: do this. And it didn't worry me. Well, it worried
Speaker 3: me a little bit, but it was just a small voice.
Speaker 3: It didn't worry me that I didn't know how I.
Speaker 2: Felt you've never done it before.
Speaker 4: Right, No, I've never done it before.
Speaker 3: And I'm going to get two hundred of my new
Speaker 3: best friends who probably don't even speak English, and we're
Speaker 3: going to work as a team and we're going to
Speaker 3: figure out how to deliver this promise. And that's the
Speaker 3: way I was talking. We will save forty one men.
Speaker 3: They are coming home and we're not getting hurt, because
Speaker 3: it's important as the rescuers that we also feel like
Speaker 3: we're not going to get hurt. And I felt like
Speaker 3: we could do it. And it's exactly what you said.
Speaker 3: I knew it inside, but can't explain it yet, you know.
Speaker 3: Yet I had a call about something else since then,
Speaker 3: and I knew that they were dead before I'd even
Speaker 3: thought of going there. I just knew, but I knew.
Speaker 3: I just felt that we could do it with these guys.
Speaker 3: And that's a huge dilemma for me, because up until
Speaker 3: this stage in my career, I'm a scientist, engineer. I
Speaker 3: don't do promises when I don't know the answer, you know,
Speaker 3: like I I'm conservative, But for this particular mission, I
Speaker 3: felt felt, with a capital F and an exclamation mark
Speaker 3: and no substantive explanation why, that we would be able
Speaker 3: to do it, and we did.
Speaker 2: Wow. You know what that is? I always say it
Speaker 2: and people say, ah, and you're speaking rubbish when I
Speaker 2: say the power of positive thinking. You know, when you
Speaker 2: just fill that moment, you react to the emotion that
Speaker 2: you're feeling, and you make a decision or of that
Speaker 2: emotion and normally you know, it could be a positive emotion,
Speaker 2: it could be a negative emotion, like you said, And
Speaker 2: I get it. I get it, mate, I really really do.
Speaker 2: So you hit the ground, you give out this statement,
Speaker 2: you give out this promise, you know, hence the title
Speaker 2: of the book. What do you do thereafter? Is the
Speaker 2: team energized? So how does a planning what does that
Speaker 2: all that look like? Because obviously, like you said, you've
Speaker 2: got a team of what two hundred people?
Speaker 4: Yeah? More, maybe even more. We've got a huge team there.
Speaker 3: But there's something I did and which again I felt
Speaker 3: the most important thing to do when I arrived. So
Speaker 3: I'm in this old Russian helicopter, like seriously, it's probably
Speaker 3: older than me. It's a shocker, right. Anyway, somehow or
Speaker 3: other it lands up there. I stagger out of it
Speaker 3: thinking well that was good. I wasn't killed. There would
Speaker 3: have been a shame. Like all this excitement, I got
Speaker 3: killed in a chopper crash with the landing. Anyway, so
Speaker 3: we get there. I asked the head engineer while I
Speaker 3: was flying on the plane if he could take me
Speaker 3: to the temple at the front of the tunnel so
Speaker 3: that I could pay my respects to the local god
Speaker 3: before I went in the tunnel. That was the first
Speaker 3: thing I did. And upon reflection, and why did I
Speaker 3: do that, I don't know. It wasn't like I was
Speaker 3: going through some complicated process. I just knew that that
Speaker 3: was the right thing to do. Maybe maybe it's because
Speaker 3: of my mum, because she always said you got to
Speaker 3: like play by house rules, like who's Ever's house, you know,
Speaker 3: respect and all that sort of stuff. So I bowed
Speaker 3: at this little temple that had just been built because
Speaker 3: the earlier one had been knocked down. And that's why
Speaker 3: the local priests believe the tunnel collapsed. There's a whole
Speaker 3: sub religious story there, so they believe that it was
Speaker 3: disrespect of the gods which caused the collapse in the beginning.
Speaker 3: And I was reading about that while I was on
Speaker 3: the plane, and I went and I bowed, and I
Speaker 3: gave prayer at their temple, and in doing that, I
Speaker 3: attracted one point four billion people's attention because he is
Speaker 3: an old bearded pink man jumping out of a helicopter,
Speaker 3: and the first thing he does is doesn't declare in
Speaker 3: some pompous colonial way that everything has to be my
Speaker 3: way or the highway. Instead, I knelt at their temple
Speaker 3: and did a prayer, and then I went in the
Speaker 3: tunnel and that so it's really interesting, you know, like
Speaker 3: of all the things I did, I think that was
Speaker 3: the most important. Then I went and did some fact finding,
Speaker 3: so I didn't want to read anything to show me
Speaker 3: a tunnel. So I went in. I looked at it,
Speaker 3: I touched it, I listened to it, I smelt it,
Speaker 3: literally tasted it because you just to see what because
Speaker 3: I want to know what's going on inside. And I
Speaker 3: saw twenty one prior collapses in the few hundred meters
Speaker 3: to the collapse zone. So this told me that there'd
Speaker 3: been twenty one warnings for a catastrophic collapse and nothing
Speaker 3: had changed. And so if there was a god of
Speaker 3: the mountain, it had given twenty one prior warnings, like
Speaker 3: twenty one warning shots before coming down before it trapped
Speaker 3: these forty one men. So by the time I figured
Speaker 3: that out and went back to my first meeting, I'm like, guys,
Speaker 3: can you talk hello Hello, like Earth, Earth, to get real?
Speaker 3: Because if there's twenty one prior collapses, it also means
Speaker 3: that section that we have to walk through to form
Speaker 3: the rescue is inherently unsafe the danger zone.
Speaker 2: How many more if you could go through?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So so that was grim. But the thing, the
Speaker 3: thing that I loved and you asked me about how
Speaker 3: things are done. So in Indian culture, technical culture, engineering culture,
Speaker 3: you get all the engineers in the one room and
Speaker 3: you pose the question, and then every opinion is listened
Speaker 3: to at the same time, and so the room just
Speaker 3: explodes in this concophony of conflicting opinions and discussions and
Speaker 3: dialogues and all this.
Speaker 4: Sort of thing.
Speaker 3: And so what I discover from minute zero is that
Speaker 3: whatever preconceptions I had as to how to problem solve,
Speaker 3: I am in a different culture, and I'm in a
Speaker 3: different culture with another group of very intelligent, highly respected,
Speaker 3: very competent engineers and other technicians who do not solve
Speaker 3: problems like anything I've ever seen before. This is there's
Speaker 3: a cultural dimension to the problem solving process. So I
Speaker 3: had to embrace that and that so becoming part of
Speaker 3: the team didn't mean me imposing how I thought we
Speaker 3: should problem solve. Problem solving began.
Speaker 4: How do how do I.
Speaker 2: Integrate, Yeah, in a in a not too dominating way,
Speaker 2: you know, being cultural aware and you know sensitive situation awareness,
Speaker 2: And I get it is a tough one, right because ultimately,
Speaker 2: and again you know, your expertise of just going in
Speaker 2: there and identifying these things, taste in the rock, smelling it,
Speaker 2: and is is is way beyond any of their probably
Speaker 2: you know, probably techniques or recognition, right, So is it
Speaker 2: hard to be Is it hard to be able to
Speaker 2: do that? Knowing that you've got it's quite a time
Speaker 2: sensitive let's call it a mission. It's quite a time
Speaker 2: sensitive mission.
Speaker 4: As well, it is.
Speaker 3: And so you know, I'm partly a lawyer, right, So
Speaker 3: I've got a group of engineers who are terrified that
Speaker 3: if we kill people, they're gonna end up in jail,
Speaker 3: right because so so as a lawyer, and this is
Speaker 3: really interesting. So I peel that onion skin off my
Speaker 3: head and I go, okay, but I don't say I'm
Speaker 3: being a lawyer. But in that meeting, I would say
Speaker 3: to people, do we agree if we do nothing, they're
Speaker 3: going to die?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: Do we agree that we do not have enough information
Speaker 3: to make an informed decision?
Speaker 4: Yes? Do we agree that we don't have all the
Speaker 4: equipment we would like?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 4: Do we agree that we have to do something today?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Okay, And so in the absence of the information we want,
Speaker 3: the equipment we need, and all the rest of it,
Speaker 3: what are we going to do today?
Speaker 4: And then the room would erupt.
Speaker 3: That might take say, forty minutes, and then the sugar
Speaker 3: levels would finally drop and we get to, you know,
Speaker 3: a level where we calm down, and so we've got say,
Speaker 3: one idea, And then the lawyer in me, without saying
Speaker 3: it's the lawyer, would touch and I mean touch the
Speaker 3: person who's the decision maker, and I would say, no
Speaker 3: matter what, no matter what happens, I will say, I
Speaker 3: will always say that the decision you made here today
Speaker 3: was the best decision based on all of the evidence
Speaker 3: that we have, the resources that are available to us,
Speaker 3: and in the knowledge that we have to take action today.
Speaker 3: And then the whole room would go, oh, yeah, that's
Speaker 3: a good idea, because everyone was thinking. I could tell
Speaker 3: I could feel it. They're going, oh yeah, if my
Speaker 3: ass was on the line, we all should stick together,
Speaker 3: shouldn't we. And so we had like a pact so
Speaker 3: that when we went out of the room, everyone was, yeah,
Speaker 3: we agree, this is what we're going to do today.
Speaker 2: But you say that they had a pack, but also
Speaker 2: they had a leader, and they had a leader within you,
Speaker 2: because leaders make decisions like that. Leaders show their group
Speaker 2: that they have the top cover and the backing to
Speaker 2: go in and do that job. So even though you
Speaker 2: were a group, I've identified straight away the leader in you, mate,
Speaker 2: which is absolutely amazing. I don't know if you knew that.
Speaker 2: You probably do, But from that discussion there, they've got
Speaker 2: a leader. That's probably why they were cheering. And we've
Speaker 2: got a leader that's winning to back us, that's willing
Speaker 2: to roll up his sleeves and lead from the front,
Speaker 2: which is extremely rare in this day and age.
Speaker 3: It's funny, isn't it, Because what I did was I
Speaker 3: put my face as the face of both success.
Speaker 4: And failure and they love that.
Speaker 2: And what leader does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm I'm saying I didn't mean to and
Speaker 3: I didn't mean to it's not a conscious decision. It's
Speaker 3: I've got a mission and to achieve this mission, and
Speaker 3: it is necessary for me to make these statements, and
Speaker 3: I believe that they are the right statements to make. Interestingly,
Speaker 3: you talk about leadership, I have no authority, right, I
Speaker 3: have no position. I am not even in the press conferences.
Speaker 3: You will not find anywhere on the internet one piece
Speaker 3: of video with me in a press conference.
Speaker 4: And yet the.
Speaker 3: Indian media followed me, found me, wanted to talk to
Speaker 3: me every day. So I became the face of the
Speaker 3: mission with no authority, just just doing what I do.
Speaker 3: And I felt that when you talk about leadership, I
Speaker 3: took a leadership position for the purposes of achieving the
Speaker 3: mission without having one star on my shoulder. But when
Speaker 3: I went back to India, because I asked them what
Speaker 3: did I do? And of course there's some voices who say, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, you were stealing the limelight, you're the face
Speaker 3: of it, blah blah blah. And but when I asked
Speaker 3: them what I actually did, they said, you made us
Speaker 3: believe that we could do it.
Speaker 4: You gave us hope.
Speaker 3: And I think when you talk about leadership, ant the
Speaker 3: other for me, the thing that also is not spoken.
Speaker 3: Imagine what would have happened to me upon failure, because
Speaker 3: I was the public face and the declaration of success,
Speaker 3: and the Prime Minister's department had said to me, if
Speaker 3: this fails, you better get yourself to that helicopter, which
Speaker 3: is on the helicopter, it'll be waiting to get you
Speaker 3: out because there are thousands of people here, like mobs
Speaker 3: had formed for all the men inside there, all the families.
Speaker 3: You've been up there, you know what it's like. It's
Speaker 3: not you know, you might think London's tough, but that's
Speaker 3: a tough mob up there in the Himalayas, and they
Speaker 3: will make you personally accountable and read between the lines
Speaker 3: that means possibly I will be in pieces. So like this,
Speaker 3: this was not a game, and the stakes, the stakes
Speaker 3: couldn't have been higher. And there was general distrust in
Speaker 3: the government, so there was like there were sort of
Speaker 3: I wouldn't call it rioting, but lots of shouting and
Speaker 3: screaming and you know, men with guns to keep them
Speaker 3: under control and all that sort of thing. So this
Speaker 3: was no you know, it's no academic exercise like this
Speaker 3: is the real deal.
Speaker 2: So talk to me about the action. How do you
Speaker 2: execute this mission, Arnold, and how does it go? Talk
Speaker 2: us through it? So us put us in there with you.
Speaker 4: Yes, So.
Speaker 3: There's what we do is we divide the rescue mission
Speaker 3: into multiple teams, divided along existing organizational boundaries. So we
Speaker 3: put one set of organizations in charge of vertical shaft
Speaker 3: drilling from the top of the mountain down. So we're
Speaker 3: aiming to have the option of coming down from the
Speaker 3: top of the mountain, hitting the top of the tunnel
Speaker 3: near where the workers are, and then extracting them, perhaps
Speaker 3: through a capsule or something. We've got another team working
Speaker 3: on a side intervention where we've excavated a launch chamber
Speaker 3: for a tunnel boring machine coming in from the side.
Speaker 3: We've got another intervention that we're setting up from the back.
Speaker 3: It'll have to come through a fair bit of mountain,
Speaker 3: but in fact we abandoned that early because the tunnel
Speaker 3: on the other side is also in a diabolical state,
Speaker 3: so we exclude that. Then at the main section where
Speaker 3: we ultimately do do the rescue, we've got the main
Speaker 3: augered tube which we're putting through, which is about eight
Speaker 3: hundred mil with a big auger and a big pushing
Speaker 3: device on it. And then in addition to that, we've
Speaker 3: got a second method, which would be a conventional mining operation,
Speaker 3: probably run by the army, where we'll build a small,
Speaker 3: small mine shaft using the side of the tunnel as
Speaker 3: one wall, and come alongside and see if we can
Speaker 3: get the men. So we had multiple parallel things going on,
Speaker 3: but we had to coordinate each of them so that
Speaker 3: we didn't disturb the ground for each of the other.
Speaker 3: So the vertical one was going really well until it
Speaker 3: wasn't because we noticed that the amount of water coming
Speaker 3: into the tunnel was increasing and we were we were
Speaker 3: concerned that we might burst an aquifer and drown everybody,
Speaker 3: and that would be bad.
Speaker 2: An aquifer is obviously a pool of water that's encapsulated
Speaker 2: within the rock.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like a big ocean up up in the
Speaker 3: in there, because because the Himalayas used to be ocean
Speaker 3: floor and they've been pushed up. That's how you get
Speaker 3: your springs and things up there. They're actually oceans trapped
Speaker 3: in mountains up in the Himalayas. So one of the
Speaker 3: ways we regularly kill people in tunnels in the himal
Speaker 3: As we drown them. And so that's so not intuitive.
Speaker 3: So we had water coming in and we were worried
Speaker 3: we were going to trigger a collapse in the crown,
Speaker 3: so we stopped.
Speaker 4: We actually halted that. The fact that the men who
Speaker 4: are in charge of the vertical drilling.
Speaker 3: Operation were prepared to halt when they were so close
Speaker 3: to getting through the crown shows what a wonderful team
Speaker 3: we were, because you know what, it's like, we're the
Speaker 3: team and you've you know, wonder they were there, We're there.
Speaker 3: They were like just stump, yeah, So that's like super hard.
Speaker 4: Then we've got the Auger. I'll go to the Auger team.
Speaker 3: So we've got the bigger eight hundred mil pipe, We've
Speaker 3: got an auger, and it blows up and so where
Speaker 3: the Auger is now completely disintegrated, that part of the
Speaker 3: machine's broken down. We're about ten meters away from getting through,
Speaker 3: but we've crashed into a whole lot of broken steel
Speaker 3: and reinforcements, which is the old tunnel, and it's wrecked everything.
Speaker 3: And in fact it's there that the decision is made.
Speaker 3: We're going to now go to people in the pipe
Speaker 3: by hand digging and putting rock into a little trolley
Speaker 3: that we made I do welding, so I was down
Speaker 3: with the welding boys. So we we welded up a
Speaker 3: little trolley on a rope, so I got two men
Speaker 3: in an eight you know, eight hundreds, not march though,
Speaker 3: like little men by hand. And then we pulled the
Speaker 3: trolley out and over a period of a few days
Speaker 3: we did that last ten meters that actually works in
Speaker 3: the end, and we held the tunnel boring machine. Launch
Speaker 3: was just held while we were doing that because we
Speaker 3: didn't want to trigger an avalanche, and we held we
Speaker 3: were fabricating for the mining operation, but we held so.
Speaker 3: And also the rescue workers. I was talking to them,
Speaker 3: and we knew there could easily be a catastrophic failure
Speaker 3: once we busted through, because we could see in the
Speaker 3: survey data and the light, our data and everything else
Speaker 3: that the thing was moving. And so one of the
Speaker 3: things I was doing was going to each man who
Speaker 3: was going to go in as a rescue worker and
Speaker 3: say to them, look, when you get in there, if
Speaker 3: it starts to blow, can you go to the back,
Speaker 3: like go down the far end of the tunnel. And
Speaker 3: I promise another promise. This was going to be my
Speaker 3: second what was my second promise we'll come and get you.
Speaker 3: But remember it could take us two weeks or so
Speaker 3: on our best calculations, because we had a feel for
Speaker 3: the rock. Another couple of weeks and we might lose
Speaker 3: power supply, so you might be in the dark. And
Speaker 3: in preparation for that, we'd had the guys who were
Speaker 3: trapped stockpiling food and water at the back of the
Speaker 3: tunnel as well, so if it caved in, so we
Speaker 3: were preparing for a second a second failure.
Speaker 2: Wow, So loads of concurrent activity going on there for
Speaker 2: multiple options. If A didn't work, then then B didn't work,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. And talk about talk about a
Speaker 2: combination of skill sets. You say you're a worlder, a lawyer,
Speaker 2: and engineer, geologist, you're almost you're almost made for this
Speaker 2: specific mission at hand, because it was do you know
Speaker 2: what I mean by that? Because I'm just picking up
Speaker 2: all these things and I'm like, wow, wow, Wow, he's
Speaker 2: using all of his skill sets.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 3: And I know too well, which is part of the
Speaker 3: reason I'm so troubled. It's as if the universe prepped
Speaker 3: me for this one job. It's as a whole of
Speaker 3: my life, i'd been prepared. Yeah, when the rescue was finished,
Speaker 3: I can't, like still can't think of any skill I'd
Speaker 3: learned over the period of my life that I didn't use.
Speaker 3: And I can't think of anyone on the team who
Speaker 3: we could have done without. Like it was like this huge,
Speaker 3: incredibly improbable jigsaw puzzle that, for some reason I still
Speaker 3: don't understand, came together and it's exactly like you picked
Speaker 3: it up. That's this is the problem I face because
Speaker 3: I look at it and I go and even through
Speaker 3: my life, I'm like, why why do I know welding?
Speaker 3: Why do I know about driving machinery? Like why do
Speaker 3: I know about geology? Why do I know about law?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: And yet there in the mountain for this rescue, all.
Speaker 2: Needed still the stars aligned. Yeah, so when you breach
Speaker 2: through Arnold, you know that moment when do you get
Speaker 2: the message that we're in the tunnel and we're there
Speaker 2: and now it's a case of let's get them out. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I remember that really, really well. So I've been
Speaker 3: down there where all the preparations are being done. I'm
Speaker 3: down there doing that. But as soon as soon as
Speaker 3: I knew that we were nearly there, because you get
Speaker 3: like they're preparing for the actual getting in. I retreated,
Speaker 3: And the reason I retreated was I felt that this
Speaker 3: was a very special moment for the country because it
Speaker 3: had been so huge on their media. They'd been live
Speaker 3: coverage for seventeen days. And I didn't feel I should
Speaker 3: be there. It's like my job is done. And so
Speaker 3: what I did was I Withdrew and I sat up
Speaker 3: behind the family because the families had been bought in
Speaker 3: and they had like little chairs for them to sit
Speaker 3: in the tunnel, but back from the zone of most
Speaker 3: likely collapse, and I sat with my back up against
Speaker 3: the wall behind their chairs.
Speaker 4: Actually connected to the rocks.
Speaker 3: I was actually kind of touching the mountain, like sort
Speaker 3: of going, come on, come.
Speaker 4: On, Nelly, Yeah, we're nellly there.
Speaker 3: We're nearly there, and life can be a bit not nice,
Speaker 3: you know. So you know, So I was sitting there
Speaker 3: and the and then all the cheering starts because the
Speaker 3: people start coming out. But what was extraordinary for me,
Speaker 3: and I'd never really thought about it. All the families
Speaker 3: were silent, and I think I think they felt like
Speaker 3: they were looking at ghosts. I actually don't think they
Speaker 3: thought they would ever see their family again. And I
Speaker 3: suspect in their minds they were thinking that this was
Speaker 3: all some conspiracy or some fabrication, because a lot of
Speaker 3: them were questioning whether their loved ones were really alive.
Speaker 3: And there was always this uh, this, you know, this
Speaker 3: negative narrative that's very popular now where the government's not
Speaker 3: telling you the truth and there's really but and so
Speaker 3: when they came out, they were silent, and I wouldn't
Speaker 3: like I would never have imagined they would be silent.
Speaker 3: Then I was watching and then just just tears like
Speaker 3: they like just crying, like just quietly. Not so the
Speaker 3: rescue workers they're all, are you hear you know, and
Speaker 3: that's the stuff that you see on the on the videos.
Speaker 3: But the families silent, And that was a it's really interesting.
Speaker 3: I'm still thinking about that.
Speaker 2: So when number forty one came out, what did it
Speaker 2: feel like going from the grim reaper to an archangel?
Speaker 2: This being your your first.
Speaker 3: Time, Yeah, that's right, my my rescue virgin moment. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So my job wasn't done because I had personal relationships
Speaker 3: with all the rescuers that had gone in, and I'd
Speaker 3: given them my assurance that I would come and get
Speaker 3: them if they got stuck. So I actually waited for
Speaker 3: all of them to come out. And so when I
Speaker 3: had all because remember my promise is two fold, Yeah,
Speaker 3: so I can't I can't just take one.
Speaker 4: I've got to take both.
Speaker 2: Right, So yeah, they you're going to rescue them all.
Speaker 2: And also no one's going to get hurt. Yeah, in
Speaker 2: the in the introm Yeah.
Speaker 3: So when I had all of them come out, I
Speaker 3: felt and this you may well understand, and it's not intuitive.
Speaker 3: I felt enormous contentment. And so people say to me, oh,
Speaker 3: you must have been happier. No, it wasn't happy. Oh
Speaker 3: you must have been excited. No, it wasn't even excited.
Speaker 3: It was contentment. And even the word contentment probably doesn't
Speaker 3: express it correctly. It's this feeling that, as a human being,
Speaker 3: you've discharged your duty honorably and you've been a part
Speaker 3: of something special, and it's like, maybe that's it, Maybe
Speaker 3: that's what I was here for. Like it's like a
Speaker 3: really we like it's a weird thing, like if I
Speaker 3: was a religious person, which I'm still deciding whether I
Speaker 3: am or art, but it's like, you know, it's like
Speaker 3: a Nirvana moment, I suppose, because I just feel contented,
Speaker 3: and I, yeah, that's how it felt.
Speaker 2: Was the energy of that situation and of of that moment.
Speaker 2: Did it feel religious that and you mentioned that, did
Speaker 2: it feel religious that you've done the right thing by
Speaker 2: going to do a prayer at the beginning? Did that
Speaker 2: all come back around? And did you think you know,
Speaker 2: I've got to now, you know, because it is a
Speaker 2: religious you know, there's a there's a sort of religious
Speaker 2: side to that of praying to the mountain gods. And
Speaker 2: I do the.
Speaker 4: Same, You do the same, so you get it on
Speaker 4: the mountains. Yeah, yeah, you get it.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, So so we've done this.
Speaker 4: This is from the day after right, amazing.
Speaker 3: Right, So so I'm told by the Prime Minister's department
Speaker 3: there's a helicopter waiting to fly me away, and I've
Speaker 3: got to get out of there because a happy mob
Speaker 3: is dangerous in the same way that an unhappy mob
Speaker 3: is because maybe they go, ah, we want some of
Speaker 3: his teeth.
Speaker 2: Or we want his hair. You come back bedless.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but I didn't. I didn't do what I
Speaker 3: was told. Instead, the rescue workers, the SDRF rescue workers
Speaker 3: and I we made a pack that we would go
Speaker 3: to the temple on top of the mountain and give thanks.
Speaker 3: And so the helicopter was waiting, doing its helicopter thing.
Speaker 3: So we snuck off together and we went to the
Speaker 3: top of the mountain and had the best celebration and
Speaker 3: see for those guys just like me. Normally we bring
Speaker 3: people home in body bags and this time there were
Speaker 3: no body bags and none of us had been heard.
Speaker 3: And so there's this amazing video which is the guys
Speaker 3: made up a song about me. I've got no idea
Speaker 3: what it was saying, like except the Arnie Dix I
Speaker 3: know that bit. But we found this log up on
Speaker 3: top of the mountain where there's this temple, and they
Speaker 3: put on a concert, a singing and dancing concert. And
Speaker 3: then I was like, oh, well I'll join them, because like,
Speaker 3: what the hell.
Speaker 4: We're all alive.
Speaker 3: And that video, which was totally unrehearsed spontaneously they did
Speaker 3: the singing and dancing. It had something like a hundred
Speaker 3: million hits in India. Wow, because it's just lovely.
Speaker 2: Wow. So absolutely, it's pure it's lovely.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's just a.
Speaker 2: Well listen, Arnold, You've been an absolute pleasure to have
Speaker 2: on my podcast. You are humble as you are, kind
Speaker 2: as you are knowledgeable, as awesome as your beard is.
Speaker 2: I couldn't compliment you anymore, mate. Thank you, sir, Thank you.
Speaker 2: And to learn more about Arnold's extraordinary career, you can
Speaker 2: pick up a copy of his new book, The Promise.
Speaker 2: I link the details in the show notes. Thanks for
Speaker 2: listening to this episode of head Game. If you enjoyed it,
Speaker 2: please leave me a review. I'm at Middleton. See you
Speaker 2: next time.