Rescued Chinese miners express relief after being trapped for over two weeks

After being trapped underground for at least two weeks, the two miners in China who were rescued on January 26 described their feeling of joy and consolation. Out of the group of 22 miners who were trapped hundreds of metres underground after the January 10 blast in east China's Shandong province, 11 were pulled out alive by the rescue workers but the death toll reached 10. As per the Chinese state broadcaster CGTN report, one of the miners, surnamed as Du described the feeling while speaking to the reporters from the hospital bed and said, “I feel like I am reborn”.

Du, who was a part of the 11 miners who first managed to make contact with the rescuers on January 17 by sending up a note reportedly through a long shaft drilled down into the rock, said that the trapped mineworkers “had no food to eat for the first nine days”. He further reportedly added, “There are no words to describe the feeling (of being rescued). So relieved".

Meanwhile, as per the report, another survivor with surname Wang told the outlet that the miners understood the difficulty rescuers had to face in order to drill that deep and take out the workers. Wang noted that 22 miners were trapped nearly 600 metres below the ground and called the task of recusing ‘daunting’. 

One of the first group of workers had died last week due to head injuries sustained from the blast. However, other nine, found dead in different parts of the mine were confirmed dead on January 25. On being out and alive, Wang said, “We knew clearly how hard it was to drill that deep. We were trapped nearly 600 metres below ground. It was a daunting task. We are so happy”.

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Cause of explosion under investigation

As per reports, Chen Yumin, director of the rescue group informed that there were two explosions with the second one causing more damage. However, the cause of the incident is still under investigation but the blast was significant enough to release at least 70 tons of debris that blocked the shaft, disabling the elevators and leading to at least 22 workers being trapped hundreds of metres below the ground in the Hushan gold mine on the outskirts of Yantai which is the main gold producing region in Shandong on the northeast coast. 

As per reports, the managers of the mine have been detained by the Chinese authorities for delayed reporting on the explosion for over 24 hours. As of now, the cause of the explosion has not been announced but the supervision has been increased in China’s mining industry which reportedly used to average 5,000 deaths every year.  Just last year, two accidents in Chongqing killed 39 miners. The rescue in Qixia involved over 600 people with nearly 25 ambulances waiting at the scene along with other specialists. 

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