Post by Bennett D. Ebberly on Oct 25, 2003 18:28:44 GMT -5
Miners emerge from flooded mine
Saturday, October 25, 2003 Posted: 12:53 PM EDT (1653 GMT)
SHAKHTY, Russia (CNN) -- Thirty-three weary men have emerged after nearly two days trapped in a flooded mine in southern Russia.
But 13 miners remain unaccounted for, officials said on Saturday evening, although divers and diggers were still on the scene searching for them.
The 33 men crawled through a narrow 200-meter tunnel, half-filled with water, in groups of three or four per hour. At the end of the tunnel was a 30-minute elevator ride to the mine shaft's opening.
Russian officials at the mine, in Russia's Rostov region, 1000 km (600 miles) south of Moscow, initially announced that all 46 miners were alive after they were trapped when water pressure burst through from an adjacent, abandoned shaft.
Later though, officials said they had only located 33 and were uncertain about the other 13.
As miners in the first group slowly made their way upward, scouts probed the shaft for that smaller group and engineers dug a shaft toward another area of the mine, searching for the other group.
One of the first miners was brought out on a stretcher. They were all taken by ambulance to a hospital for treatment.
The 46 miners became trapped Thursday around 7 p.m. local time when the Zapadnaya mine began filling with water, shorting out the mine's electrical system and making the elevator to the surface inoperable, according to Oleg Grekov with Russia's Emergency Ministry in Rostov-on-the-Don -- the regional capital.
Initially filling the coal shaft at about 3 feet per minute, the rate had slowed to about one meter per hour nearly 24 hours later. By Saturday, the flow of water was stopped and water levels were dropping.
While worried friends and family waited, the rescuers raced against rising waters and the possibility of a collapse to reach the trapped miners.
CNN's Ryan Chilcote at the rescue scene said that the rescue was being seen as "miraculous development" as there had been skepticism the men would be brought out alive.
"Very few people expected such a positive development," he said.
Hopes had rested on the prospect the miners had scrambled into an air pocket more than 2,600 feet (800 meters) beneath the surface of the Zapadnaya-Kapitalnaya shaft, built more than 60 years ago.
Russian media said President Vladimir Putin, criticized in the past for not responding swiftly to disasters, had ordered officials to "proceed thoroughly with rescue efforts."
Workers prepare a bulldozer for rescue work in a mine shaft.
Russia's dilapidated and unprofitable network of coal mines has long been subject to accidents.
NTV said industry officials had complained that lack of financing in closing down sections of collieries allowed accumulations of water in shafts taken out of service.
The stricken mine had flooded earlier this year as underground waters rose. No one was working then in the shafts.
In neighboring ex-Soviet Ukraine, more than 200 miners were killed in accidents in each of the past two years.
In June, 11 workers died when a mineshaft collapsed in Russia's Kuzbass field in Siberia. And in post-Soviet Russia's worst such disaster, more than 60 miners died when a methane explosion ripped through a Siberian pit in December 1997.
Saturday, October 25, 2003 Posted: 12:53 PM EDT (1653 GMT)
SHAKHTY, Russia (CNN) -- Thirty-three weary men have emerged after nearly two days trapped in a flooded mine in southern Russia.
But 13 miners remain unaccounted for, officials said on Saturday evening, although divers and diggers were still on the scene searching for them.
The 33 men crawled through a narrow 200-meter tunnel, half-filled with water, in groups of three or four per hour. At the end of the tunnel was a 30-minute elevator ride to the mine shaft's opening.
Russian officials at the mine, in Russia's Rostov region, 1000 km (600 miles) south of Moscow, initially announced that all 46 miners were alive after they were trapped when water pressure burst through from an adjacent, abandoned shaft.
Later though, officials said they had only located 33 and were uncertain about the other 13.
As miners in the first group slowly made their way upward, scouts probed the shaft for that smaller group and engineers dug a shaft toward another area of the mine, searching for the other group.
One of the first miners was brought out on a stretcher. They were all taken by ambulance to a hospital for treatment.
The 46 miners became trapped Thursday around 7 p.m. local time when the Zapadnaya mine began filling with water, shorting out the mine's electrical system and making the elevator to the surface inoperable, according to Oleg Grekov with Russia's Emergency Ministry in Rostov-on-the-Don -- the regional capital.
Initially filling the coal shaft at about 3 feet per minute, the rate had slowed to about one meter per hour nearly 24 hours later. By Saturday, the flow of water was stopped and water levels were dropping.
While worried friends and family waited, the rescuers raced against rising waters and the possibility of a collapse to reach the trapped miners.
CNN's Ryan Chilcote at the rescue scene said that the rescue was being seen as "miraculous development" as there had been skepticism the men would be brought out alive.
"Very few people expected such a positive development," he said.
Hopes had rested on the prospect the miners had scrambled into an air pocket more than 2,600 feet (800 meters) beneath the surface of the Zapadnaya-Kapitalnaya shaft, built more than 60 years ago.
Russian media said President Vladimir Putin, criticized in the past for not responding swiftly to disasters, had ordered officials to "proceed thoroughly with rescue efforts."
Workers prepare a bulldozer for rescue work in a mine shaft.
Russia's dilapidated and unprofitable network of coal mines has long been subject to accidents.
NTV said industry officials had complained that lack of financing in closing down sections of collieries allowed accumulations of water in shafts taken out of service.
The stricken mine had flooded earlier this year as underground waters rose. No one was working then in the shafts.
In neighboring ex-Soviet Ukraine, more than 200 miners were killed in accidents in each of the past two years.
In June, 11 workers died when a mineshaft collapsed in Russia's Kuzbass field in Siberia. And in post-Soviet Russia's worst such disaster, more than 60 miners died when a methane explosion ripped through a Siberian pit in December 1997.