Men were trapped 200 metres below surface of mine in Shandong province that collapsed on Christmas Day

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Rescuers in China have saved four miners who were trapped more than 200 metres underground for 36 days after seams in the pit suddenly collapsed.

Footage from state broadcaster CCTV showed watching crowds applaud as the men, aged between 36 and 58, were brought to the surface one by one in a cramped capsule following a long and perilous rescue operation.

In front of onlookers and news crews, the men were wrapped in military blanketsand put in ambulances, their eyes covered.

The gypsum mine in Shandong province, east China, collapsed on 25 December with sufficient force that it registered as a seismic event, leaving 29 people trapped.



Of these, 11 miners were rescued the following day and one was pronounced dead. After the lastest rescue, 13 miners remain missing.

The rescue operation began five days after the collapse, when crews using infrared cameras detected the men, weak with hunger and waving their hands. They were able to tell those above ground that they were sheltering in underground passages.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A miner is lifted from the collapsed pit in Pingyi, east China. Photograph: Xinhua/ReX/Shutterstock

Rescue teams began drilling towards them, first reaching them on 8 January, according to CCTV, sending down provisions, clothes and lamps.

The operation was slowed by complicated geological conditions that made the tunnels unstable, the AFP news agency reported.

CCTV identified the rescued men as Hao Zhicheng, 50, Li Qiusheng,39, Guan Qingji, 58, and Hua Mingxi, 36.



The gypsum mine and other local pits were ordered in October to stop production because of a risk of sinkholes but kept operating, AFP quoted the Beijing Times as saying.

Two days after the mine collapsed, its owner, named as Ma Congbo, died after jumping into a well, having apparently killed himself. Four officials in Pingyi county, where the mine is located, were fired.



China’s mining industry is notoriously perilous, even by the standards of the country’s record of industrial deaths during its recent period of breakneck economic growth.

A few days before the mine collapsed more than 80 people were reported missing after a vast hill of building debris and industrial waste buried an industrial park in the southern city of Shenzhen.

Four months earlier at least 50 people were killed in the eastern city of Tianjin, after a series of huge explosions at a warehouse filled with chemicals.

China is the world’s largest producer of coal. Authorities say colliery accidents killed 931 people last year, a figure some rights groups claim is likely to be considerably lower than the real toll.



