XIANGNING, China — Efforts to reach 33 miners trapped in a flooded coal pit forged ahead today, boosted by the rescue of 115 workers pulled out Monday after more than a week underground.
Five bodies were found today in the mine in northern China’s Shanxi province, state television reported, but expressed confidence that the remaining miners could be saved.
Some of those rescued had survived for eight days by eating sawdust and strapping themselves to the walls of the shafts with their belts to avoid drowning while they slept.
The survivors were hustled out of the mine wrapped in blankets, some with their eyes covered, and hurried to waiting ambulances. One clapped on his stretcher and reached out his blackened hands to grasp those of rescuers.
The dramatic rescue was broadcast live on national television, a rare piece of good news for China’s mining industry, the deadliest in the world.
“A miracle has finally happened,” Liu Dezheng said after the first nine miners were taken out early Monday morning. “We believe that more miracles will happen.”
A rescue spokesman said 115 survivors were pulled out Monday, but they continued looking for the others still trapped in the mine that flooded March 28 when workers digging a tunnel broke into an old shaft filled with water.
The situation underground seemed to have worsened, with gas levels in the mine reaching dangerous levels, China Central Television said.
The rescued miners were being treated at hospitals under tight security. At the Hejin City Hospital not far from the mine, a dozen police guarded the main entrance. The doors to the ward where they were being treated were padlocked.
Accidents killed 2,631 coal miners in China last year, down from 6,995 in 2002, the worst year on record.
