It is dank, dark and dangerous deep underground, but it is in such conditions that the Lily Mine rescuers will operate as they try to recover the bodies of the three workers who died there.
With millions of tons of soil above, below and on either side of them, rescue teams - almost all of them volunteers - will need to deal with these claustrophobic conditions if the recovery is to be a success.
Christo de Klerk, CEO of Mine Rescue Services, said the conditions at the mine meant that the mission was looking difficult at best, and largely because of the time it would take for the process to begin.
De Klerk was part of the original rescue attempts soon after the collapse on February 5 last year and has visited the mine in recent months. Having done more than 1,000 rescue or body-recovery missions in his 35 years on the job, he knows just how challenging it is going to be.
story_article_left1
"We were there on February 5. Initially when it collapsed, we had a sinkhole from the surface. Then we immediately started with the rescue. We were able to get in underground; conditions were still good," he said.
First, massive rocks had to be moved, which delayed the attempts to get to the trapped container. Then disaster struck.
"On the Saturday, exactly a week later, there was a secondary collapse. Everything collapsed into the hole. It filled it up with millions of tons of big rock. It really made it so much more complicated. Even the underground workings decayed severely," he said.
In the past year, those conditions would have worsened.
"It's got so bad that we can't even go down to assess the underground workings. It was so bad that we couldn't risk lowering a person down there. It was too dangerous," he said.
The only solution was to dig the 350m tunnel and get access to the area underneath the container. Even if this happened, rescue workers would constantly be staring the possibility of death in the face.
"When you go in you can have excessive heat, you can have very high gas concentrations, so high that one breath can kill you. You can have up to 0% visibility.
"And then, depending on if there was a fire and the timber supports burnt, you can have major rock falls and so on. There is no ventilation; the air will now be stagnant.
"The only way to retrieve the container is if the conditions underground are safe enough. There is a risk that this will not be the case," he said.
Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.