OWN CORRESPONDENT, Welkom | Friday 5.50pm.
RESCUE workers have on Friday evening located two miners who went missing after an earthquake hit Welkom in the Free State on Friday morning. It is uncertain if they are alive.
The men were trapped deep in the mine where drilling was taking place and there was not much room for the rescue team to move, Van Zyl said. At least 761 miners, stuck underground when the quake hit just after midnight, were safely brought to the surface at four of the mine’s shafts.
Another 200 miners were by late afternoon waiting to be brought the surface. 1.50pm:
SIX hundred miners trapped underground by an earthquake just after midnight in Welkom had been rescued by noon on Friday.
The army has been deployed in the Free State town amid fears of looting after the earthquake — measuring 4,6 on the Richter scale, and not 4,2 as originally thought — struck, damaging homes, and cutting water and electricity services.
Some 400 miners are still making their way to safety, while another 600 had been brought to the surface after being trapped underground in the Eland shaft of AngloGold’s Matjhabeng mine near Welkom in the Free State.
The direct cause of the miner’s plight was the break in electricity supplies, due to a damaged sub-station. Emergency generators were brought in to power the lifts of the Nyala, Kudu, Sable and Eland shafts.
Two miners are still unaccounted for, according to mine spokesman Andries van Zyl, but rescue teams are out searching for them.
The quake cut power to the mine lifts, making it impossible for the miners to surface. The Eland shaft — which produces 26kg of gold a day — will close for two days losing R8-million in production.
Other buildings at the mine also suffered damage, as did buildings and walls in two suburbs Rheerderpark and Flamingo Park, where the earthquake’s epicentre was.
Damage to the city centre was not as severe as originally believed, says Welkom’s fire chief Dion Earle.