Miners freed after being entombed with dead

Rescuers shift 300 tons of earth as four-day drama grips South Africa

Chris McGreal in Johannesburg
Friday January 14, 2000

Nine gold miners in South Africa trapped more than a mile underground with the corpses of dead colleagues for four days were finally brought to the surface last night. Rescue teams were still trying to reach the bodies of four men killed in the rock fall at the Orkney shaft, 100 miles south-west of Johannesburg, on Monday.

The fate of two other miners who were seriously injured in the accident was unclear. The survivors had been unable to reach the pair, who have had neither food nor water since an earth tremor brought a tunnel roof down.

The rescued men, who were described by officials as extremely exhausted, were given intravenous drips and taken to waiting ambulances with oxygen masks strapped to their faces. Family and friends waiting at the top of the shaft cheered and clapped as the first of the rescued men appeared.

The nine survived in a pitch black cavity by licking water poured down a compressed air pipe, which was also a conduit for semi-liquid food and air to reduce the stifling heat.

The worst of it for the trapped men was sharing what became a tomb about 18 inches high with their dead colleagues. Mine officials said the stench of their decomposing bodies filled the tunnels.

After getting out of the cavity, "the first thing they wanted was water," said Charmane Russell, the mine's spokeswoman. "They have since been in relatively good spirits, working with the rescuers and quite calm, which is important."

Patrice Motsepe, chairman of the company that owns the mine, African Rainbow Minerals, said he did not hold out much hope for the two injured men.

"A grave concern to us is that these two miners were seriously injured at the time of the seismic event. Information received thus far is not very encouraging," he said.

Rescue teams of 70 men at a time used hammers and chisels to hack their way through rock inch by inch. Over the four days they shifted 300 tons of earth. Explosives could not be used for fear of provoking another fall.

Drills were also used to break through the fallen debris unleashed by the tremor, a mine official said, winches were brought in to play to pull out boulders.

Miners came from across the country to volunteer for the teams. Some of them used shovels and their hands to scoop away dirt and gravel.

"I don't know how we have moved so much rock so fast. We couldn't do this for money, but there are men down there. It could be any of us," one of the rescuers said.

The rescuers made contact through the air pipe on Tuesday evening, after the workers had been trapped for 30 hours.

On Wednesday evening the teams thought they were on the edge of a breakthrough when they were just three yards from the trapped men. But fresh rock falls blocked their progress for another day.

The survivors tried to dig toward their rescuers but the batteries on their headlamps ran flat, and they were working almost blind in the dark. In the end they became too tired, a mine employee said.

The frequency of earth tremors, and the depth of the shafts, make South Africa's mines particularly dangerous. The Orkney mine was the scene of one of the c ountry's worst mining accidents: in 1995, a mine train fell into an elevator shaft on a carriage full of men, killing 104.

At that time the mine was owned by Anglo-American, which sold it in January 1998 to black investors under the post-apartheid government's philosophy of economic empowerment for South Africa's black majority.

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