Glad they are OK. Just curious.

Even with a complete loss of hydraulic fluid from the normal system, pulling the aux handle:
1- Releases the balk for utilizing the aux pump handle to pump the gear down manually.
2-Isolates the main hydraulic system from the auxilary system &
3-Isolates the return line.

When done correctly, the manual system befomes completely separated from the main system for lowering the gear when normal system operation is not available. Of course, I wasn't there, so I imagine something else was up as well.....

HD