Hope nf 01 saving miners gone

Press, 4 June 1988, Page 10

Hope nf 01 saving miners gone

NZPA-Reuter Borken, West Germany Rescue teams have set about the grim task of hauling up the bodies of 57 miners killed in one of West Germany’s worst pit disasters. • Throughout yesterday,' the chances of finding any of the workers alive grew slimmer by the hour. Once it was announced that there was no chance of saving any of the men, mostly young fathers, more than a day after explosions ripped through the mine, beleaguered rescuers began winching up the corpses. “We are all numb with shock,” said the Hesse state Interior Minister, Gottfried Miide, one of the main co-ordinators who stood at the site ,

where the first bodies were brought out Bernd Hessler, mayor of the 14,000-strong mainly working-class community, said families of the dead were being invited to gather in a village gymnasium where Catholic, Protestant and Muslim priests would be on hand to counsel the bereaved. Fourteen members of the ill-fated early shift were Turks. Personal tragedies were countless — one young man was on his first day of work after graduating from school, one had recently married. - * The corpses, wrapped in plastic body bags and tied to a metal capsule, were brought 150 m up to the surface by crane. They were being taken to* a temporary morgue, where workmates and relatives were asked to identify them. Initial investigations on some of the bodies showed death from carbon monoxide asphyxiation. The men who died in the blast were saved a more painful and prolonged death. A memorial service has been provisionally planned for Wednesday. The Government has ordered all State buildins to fiy their flags at half-; mast.

President Richard von Weizsaecker, Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the Op- ; position leader, HansJochen Vogel, sent their condolences, as did the East German leader, Erich Honecker.