115 miners rescued in China

April 6, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

XIANGNING, China

Rescuers paddled the rafts with their hands in the dark, flooded mine shaft, letting out air so the inflatable vessels could squeeze through tight passages. From deep in the tunnel came the call: “Can you get me out of here?”

Replied a rescuer: “Since we got in, we will definitely be able to take you out of here.”

And they did, pulling 115 miners to safety Monday, their eighth day trapped in the northern China mine.

Emergency teams were trying to reach 38 others still in the Wangjialing mine as of Monday night.

Even so, the rescue was a rare piece of good news for a coal-mining industry that is notoriously the world’s deadliest. Chinese officials called it “a miracle.” State TV repeatedly broadcast images of cheering and crying rescuers — a cathartic moment for the country observing “grave-sweeping day,” a traditional time for remembering the dead.

“This is probably one of the most amazing rescues in the history of mining anywhere,” said David Feickert, a coal-mine safety adviser to the Chinese government.

Some miners told rescuers of eating tree bark and drinking the filthy water to survive. Some had strapped themselves to the shafts’ walls with their belts — or similarly suspended themselves using their clothes — to avoid drowning while they slept. Some climbed into a mining cart that floated by.

One miner “showed us the sawdust from his pocket. He told me it was hard to chew,” the leader of one of the rescue teams, Chen Yongsheng, told reporters. Chen gave the most-detailed, firsthand account of the rescue efforts and his thrill at reaching the miners. When the rafts got stuck in the narrow shaft, Chen said his team floated bags of a nutrient solution down the tunnel to provide sustenance for the trapped miners.

Work crews had been racing to pump out the flooded mine since March 28, when workers digging a tunnel for the new mine accidentally breached an old shaft filled with water.