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Eleven of 13 miners trapped for five days found alive in southern Russia
Khaleej Times, (AFP)
29 October 2003
NOVOSHAKHTINSK, Russia - Eleven of the 13 miners trapped for five days underground in southern Russia were found alive on Wednesday, as an explosion at a mine in the Far East killed five.
Rescue teams at the Zapadnaya mine in the Rostov region also found the body of one miner, while one remained missing and was feared dead.
Officials planned to start bringing the miners to the surface around 0800 GMT, Russian television reported.
Of the 11 found alive, news agencies said one was in serious condition. It said none of those rescued were able to move about on their own after their ordeal.
Rescue teams discovered the miners hours after entering the tunnel where they had taken refuge after freezing water from an underground lake on Thursday flooded the shaft where they were working.
The rescuers were guided by a message which the trapped miners scribbled on the wall, indicating that they had left for the mine’s central shaft.
A total of 71 men were working at the mine at the time of the flooding, but 25 managed to scramble to the surface, and 33 other trapped miners were lifted out on Saturday.
Over the past four days, rescuers used drills to bore through an estimated 60 metres (190 feet) of coal and rock, battling at the same time to stem the rising floodwaters.
The ordeal at Zapadnaya began last Thursday, when icy water flooded the mine’s tunnels 800 meters (yards) below the surface.
The accident was the second at the mine this year. Water flooded the mine in February but there were no people underground at the time.
Meanwhile at a mine in the Russian Far Eastern region of Primorye, a powerful explosion killed five, local officials said.
The blast was believed to have been caused by methane gas.
Four miners were injured, two of whom were in serious condition, Russian television reported.
Seventy-one people were working at the Tsentralnaya mine in the town of Partizansk at the time of the blast, but the others either managed to scramble out of the mine, or had been taken out.
The injured miners were rushed to hospital with severe burns and wounds, Partizansk’s health chief Galina Pautova said.
The blast was apparently due to methane that had accumulated some 750 meters (2,500 feet) below ground, the second such incident since 1996 in one of the region’s deepest mines.
Russian mines are notorious for their poor safety record, and fatal accidents are common.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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