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Â«MiracleÂ» China mine survivors tell of ordeal

06 April 2010 01:16 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. After eight days and eight nights trapped in the pitch darkness of a flooded mine in northwest China, 115 men have been pulled out alive in what officials described as nothing less than a miracle, APA reports quoting timesonline.co.uk web-page.
Some of the miners were strong enough to walk almost unaided to lifts bringing them out of the shafts where they had been entombed since floodwaters gushed through the colliery just after noon on March 28.
One man even clapped his coal dust-coated hands as he was brought out on a stretcher and gripped the hands of rescuers and officials who reached out to touch him.
â€œIt is a miracle,â€ said Luo Lin, head of the State Administration of Work Safety, waiting at the entrance of the mine pit. â€œThe trapped miners stayed so unwaveringly determined down the mine shaft, passing through eight days and eight nights to live.â€
However, while doctors and nurses took over the job of caring for the 115 survivors, rescue workers pressed on with scouring the flooded tunnels of the Wangjialing in search of 38 men still missing hundreds of metres below the surface.
More than 5,000 rescue and support workers have worked around the clock ever since the accident, pumping millions of gallons out of the mine to bring down the water levels so that teams could enter the mine.
The teams, accompanied by divers, on Friday began descending in rotation into the mine. Late on Sunday, they were led to the first survivors by the sound of tapping on pipes along the flooded shafts.
One rescuer said he was sitting on a tap when he suddenly glimpsed a light glimmering and moving in the distance. He raced to telephone the news to colleagues on the surface.
The men raced along the shaft, the deepest in the pit, and found a group of nine men huddled on a working platform. These were the first to be brought out in the early hours of Sunday.
So relieved were they to see their rescuers that several eagerly related how they survived. Rescue worker Chen Yongsheng recounted their tale. He said: â€œThey were very smart. Several gathered together and they turned on their lamps in rotation to try to save the batteries until they could be found. When we rescued them they still have plenty of power.â€
But their ordeal was harrowing, caught by the sudden flood with nothing to eat or drink. They picked the bark from pinewood supports used to prop up the shafts to eat as hunger began to gnaw. They even drank the freezing â€“ and filthy â€“ water around them.
One man described how the floodwaters had gushed at great speed through the tunnels, sweeping him and his colleagues away. He was carried for a long distance along a shaft until his belt caught on a protrusion from the wall. He remained hanging there against the wall for three days and three nights, able to sleep without drowning.
It was only when a mining cart floated by that he and eight colleagues abandoned their wall hooks, clambered in and floated along with the waters. Finally, the cart bumped against a working platform above the surface of the flood and the nine men took refuge there to await rescue.
Among the most lucid of the first group was 38-year-old Li Guoyu from central Henan province. He insisted on borrowing a mobile phone from a doctor to call his family. He said to his wife: â€œIâ€™m good. How are you and the kid?â€
Families of the survivors were thrilled. One man,whose brother-in-law Fu Ziyang was one of those rescued, said: "He called and managed to say my sister’s nickname, ’Xiaomi,’ so we know it’s really him and that he’s alive. He was trapped underground for so long, so he’s very weak. But we are very relieved to know that he made it out safely."
Officials said most of the survivors were doing well, but seven were reported in serious condition. Doctors said the men were suffering mainly from hypothermia, dehydration and ulceration from soaking in the water for a long time.
An intensive care specialist at a London hospital said the men could be suffering from trenchfoot. He said: â€œIn most cases this will heal but you could lost skin and there is even a risk of losing limbs.â€
All the men were brought out on stretchers and wrapped from head to toe in quilts to keep them warm.
The London specialist said a long time immersed in swater caused severe dehydration and dangerously low blood pressure that could result in death so victims must be rescued horizontally.
The specialist said: â€œAs long as they could take fluids they should be able to survive, and they were physically fit to start with because of their job. But itâ€™s still a miracle.â€
The accident happened when workers dug into an older, adjacent mine that had been shut down and filled with water.
The work safety watchdog has blamed the accident on lax safety standards by the mine owner, the state-owned Huajin Coking Coal Company. It failed to heed warnings that water was accumulating in the pit before the disaster.
The rescue effort comes at the end of what has been a disastrous week for Chinaâ€™s notoriously dangerous mining sector. Altogether, nearly 30 people have died and almost 200 are missing after five separate coalmining accidents last week.