Miners miracles

Rescue of 114 at Chinese Coal Mine Called 'Miracle'

By Sharon LaFraniere, NY Times, April 5, 2010

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 mine flooded with water, rescuers found that most of the 153 men trapped underground were still alive. And by midafternoon Monday, 114 of them had been pulled to safety.

Rescue efforts continued on Monday, and rescuers hugged each other and wept for joy, a scene broadcast repeatedly on national television on Tomb-Sweeping Day, China's national holiday to commemorate the dead. A spokesman for a rescue team of more than 3,000 workers declared the outcome "a miracle."

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

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.

There were 261 workers in the mine when the March 28 accident occurred. Of them, 108 quickly made it to safety, but 153 remained trapped in the watery pit and were feared dead.

The rescue operation was huge: 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. By Friday, five days after the flooding, the water level inside the mine had dropped nearly 11 feet.

Then on Friday afternoon came a glimmer of hope as 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.

When they pulled a pipe back 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.

By Sunday night, 100 rescue workers had descended into the mine and located the first group of nine survivors. They were carried out of mine shortly after midnight and rushed to the nearest hospital in ambulances as thousands of people keeping vigil along the roadside cheered. Those survivors were later reported to be in stable condition.

Up to 300 rescuers were inside the mine by Monday morning. China Central Television, the state-controlled network, showed rescuers carrying out miners one by one. The men were wrapped in green blankets on stretchers, their eyes covered with towels to shield them from the light.

Some of the trapped miners had used their belts to attach themselves to the shaft walls, and hung there for days. Some managed to jump into a floating mine cart, the network reported.

The miners did not drink the water that flooded the mine, afraid that it was contaminated, the state news media reported. A medical officer told reporters that the survivors suffered from severe dehydration, hypothermia and skin infections from prolonged exposure to the water.

Some were in shock, according to news reports, and 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."