Miracle: 11 trapped miners found alive after five days ( 2003-10-30 09:33) (China Daily)
Eleven of 13 coal miners who were trapped in a
deep shaft in southern Russia for six days emerged alive Wednesday after
rescuers had worked around the clock to blast a tunnel through solid rock. One
of the trapped miners died underground and one remained missing, emergency
officials said.
Rescuers reached the men yesterday morning after drillers punched through to
the pit face where the miners had sought refuge following flooding in the mine.
"The guys looked fine for people who have been trapped in a mine for six
days. They came out themselves," said Alexander Smetalin, one of the rescuers.
"They were found in the northern part of the mine. They were lying there all
together."
Smetalin said that the miners had climbed up an incline in the shaft in the
Zapadnaya mine that kept them above the level of the icy water. The missing
miner had apparently left the others in hopes of finding a way out, and rescuers
were continuing to search for him, rescue officials said.
As they emerged from the shaft, relatives who had kept vigil outside the mine
cried out their names. A crowd of doctors, policemen and rescue workers
surrounded the men as they were hustled into waiting ambulances, and some
reached out to pat the miners on the back in a restrained show of relief.
The last live miner was carried out of the shaft on a stretcher shortly after
noon. Rescue workers said he was apparently suffering from exposure but that he
was conscious and responsive.
The Interfax news agency said that the director of the mine, Vasily Avdeyev,
who was among those trapped, had survived. Rescuers carried out the body of the
dead miner last.
As the rescue operation unfolded in southern Russia early yesterday, five
miners were killed in a mine explosion in the Primorye region of the Russian Far
East. Sixty-six other miners were rescued after the blast, in the town of
Partizansk, said Viktor Beltsov, a spokesman for the Russian Emergency
Situations Ministry. The blast was due to a build-up of methane and was blamed
on lax safety practices, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
After learning of the rescue and the Far East blast, President Vladimir Putin
told a Kremlin meeting that to his regret, mine accidents in Russia "were taking
on a systematic character."
The miners who were rescued yesterday were among 71 men working some 800
metres below ground on Thursday when water from a subterranean lake leaked into
a shaft above them, blocking their way to the surface. Twenty-five managed to
escape, and 33 other miners who had been trapped by the flood were rescued on
Saturday.
Emergency workers had blasted and drilled through solid rock from an adjacent
mine to reach the miners. In the meantime, hundreds of tons of rock, soil and
reinforced concrete pillars had been dumped into the shaft to staunch the flood.
According to ITAR-TASS, it was the second such accident at the southern
Russian mine this year. It said water flooded the mine in February, but there
were no people inside at the time.
Accidents are common in the Russian coal industry, and miners stage frequent
protests over wage delays and declining safety standards. According to the
Independent Coal Miners' Union, 68 miners were killed on the job last year and
98 in 2001.
