Rescuers find 22 mine fire survivors

Press, 13 July 1984, Page 6

Rescuers find 22 mine fire survivors

NZPA-Reuter Taipei Rescuers have brought to the surface the bodies of 99 miners who died in a mine fire on Taiwan which started on Tuesday.

So far 22 survivors have been found, some of them suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. “I am feeling very bad and tired,” Wu Lung-kwai, aged 38, the first miner rescued, told officials at Keelung Provincial Hospital. Doctors said that Mr Wu had inhaled poisonous gas but was not in serious condition. Two of the rescued miners were in critical condition. Doctors said that the others were in satisfactory condition but exhausted. The police said that res-

cue teams were still searching 2000 metres (6500 ft underground in the Mayshan pit at Juifang, about 50km north-east of Taipei, for possible survivors.

According to latest information from the survivors, the police said, they believed that three or four workers were still in the pit, bringing the total number of those trapped by the fire to 124.

A senior mining official said that trolleys had begun to bring, up miners on Wednesday afternoon. There had been some survivors in the first few trolleys, but only bodies later in the night, he said. Some died on their way to hospital. Hundreds of relatives and friends of the miners

flocked to the mine, and most maintained a vigil there, praying and crying. As rescuers emerged from the tunnel with survivors and bodies, the crowd repeatedly broke past the security cordons, and the police had to shove their way to ambulances. The Government has ordered all the island’s 125 mines to be closed for safety checks by engineers.

Officials said that the President, Mr Chiang Chingkuo, had threatened severe punishment against any Government official or mine executive found guilty of ignoring safety regulations.

The fire started on Tuesday and quickly engulfed the shaft. It simmered until

Wednesday morning before rescuers were able to go down in repaired trolleys. All the trapped miners were at first thought to have died because of the lack of oxygen in the pit. But hopes revived after the first survivor appeared on Wednesday afternoon. The police said that the fire had been started by an electrical short-circuit. Firemen were hampered in their attempts to fight the blaze because at one stage the mine was in danger of collapsing. The fire was the second mine disaster in Taiwan in three weeks. A cave-in caused by an explosion at the Haishan pit, in Northern Taiwan, killed 74 miners last month.