Rescue of 114 at Chinese Coal Mine Called ‘Miracle’

Rescue of 114 at Chinese Coal Mine Called ‘Miracle’
By SHARON LaFRANIERE
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: April 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/asia/06mine.html?hp


BEIJING — From the start, China’s latest coal mine disaster seemed likely to end like so many others in a country where an average of seven miners die every day: a failed rescue effort, grieving relatives and few, if any, survivors.

But for reasons still unclear, the March 28 accident at the Wangjialing mine in Shanxi Province in northern China turned out differently.

More than a week after the half-built mine flooded with water, rescuers found most of the 153 men trapped underground still alive. By late Monday, 114 of them had been pulled to safety.

As miner after miner was carried out of the mine’s mouth, rescuers hugged each other and wept for joy. Scenes of the rescue were broadcast repeatedly on national television on Tomb-Sweeping Day, China’s national holiday to commemorate the dead.

Luo Lin, head of the State Administration of Work Safety, told the state-controlled China Central Television network that the miners’ will to survive coupled with an extraordinary rescue mission resulted in a surprising outcome.

“These trapped people have made it through eight days and eight nights — this is the miracle of life,” he said. “Secondly, our rescue plan has been effective — this is a miracle in china’s search and rescue history.”

David Feickert, a coal mine safety adviser to the Chinese government, told The Associated Press: “This is probably one of the most amazing rescues in the history of mining anywhere.”

The accident occurred when workers digging tunnels broke through a wall into an old shaft filled with water, suddenly flooding the new V-shaped shaft with millions of gallons and submerging five of the miners’ nine work platforms.

The mine’s managers had ignored evidence of dangerous water leaks in the half-built mine days before the disaster, according to a preliminary investigation by the State Administration of Work Safety. Workers had been ordered to step up the pace of construction in order to meet an October deadline to begin production, the agency found. The Chinese government has managed in recent years to dramatically cut the death rate at its coal mines, but they remain among the world’s most dangerous.

Had rescue efforts failed, the accident would have been the deadliest since 172 miners perished when a mine flooded in eastern Shandong Province in 2007. More than 2,600 people died in coal mining accidents last year, many of them in Shanxi Province.

There were 261 workers underground when the Wangjialing mine began to fill with water. Of them, 108 quickly made it to safety, but 153 remained trapped in the watery pit and were feared dead.

A huge rescue operation ensued. A battery of pumps was installed, draining as much as half a million gallons of water a day from the mine in the hope that rescuers could safely enter it, the state-run media reported. By Friday, five days after the flooding, the water level inside the mine had dropped nearly 11 feet.

Friday afternoon brought a sudden glimmer of hope. Rescuers heard tapping on a metal pipe underground. They tapped and shouted into a pipe in response, and sent down hundreds of bags of glucose, a phone, pen, paper and two letters of encouragement inside a plastic bottle.

“Dear fellow workers, the Party Central Committee, the State Council and the whole nation have been concerned for your safety,” one letter began. It ended: “Hold onto the last.”

When they pulled one pipe up to the surface, rescuers found an iron wire tied to the end, an apparent signal from survivors, according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency. Rescuers also spotted swaying lights at the opposite end of the shaft, another possible sign of life.

On Saturday afternoon, a team of divers was sent down, returning within a few hours, reporting that the black murky water made it hard to reach the workers’ platforms. Rescuers also said they battled build-ups of toxic gas in the shaft.

But later that day, as water levels continued to drop, rescuers in rubber rafts managed to squeeze through narrow passages and descend into the mine’s shaft.

By late Sunday night, 100 rescue workers had located survivors, most of them stranded on a single platform. according to the Chinese media, one miner spotted a raft and called out: “Can you get me out of here?”

Nine miners were carried out of the mine early Monday morning. Thousands of people keeping vigil along the roadside cheered as ambulances carrying survivors raced by to the nearest hospital. Most of the miners were in said to be in stable condition but at least seven were listed in serious condition, Chinese media reported Monday night.

Up to 300 rescuers were inside the mine by Monday morning. and the number of men saved grew throughout the day. China Central Television broadcast videos of rescuers carrying stretcher after stretcher away from the mine, each laden with a bare-footed miner wrapped in green blankets on stretchers, eyes covered with towels as a shield from the light.

One of the rescued miners said when water flooded the shaft, he had attached himself to a mine wall with his belt so he wouldn’t drown. He hung there for three nights, he said, then climbed into a mining cart that floated by.

Others told the China News Service that they ate bark off the pine mine supports and drank the murky water despite fears that it was contaminated.

A medical officer told reporters that the survivors suffered from severe dehydration, hypothermia, skin infections from prolonged exposure to the water, and unstable blood pressure.

Some were in shock, according to news reports. One was still gripping his miner’s lamp when rescued.

“I have not slept for several days,” one rescuer, Wei Fusheng, told the television station, weeping with happiness. “Our efforts have not been in vain.”

As of Monday night, there was no word on the status of roughly three dozen miners left inside the mine. Rescued miners reported that they had seen bodies of dead co-workers, but how many may have remained unclear.