OWN CORRESPONDENT, Orkney | Friday 9.10am.
NINE of 15 miners were brought to the surface early on Friday after being trapped more than two kilometers underground in a gold mine in the North West town of Orkney for more than 90 hours.
Jubilant applause from anxious colleagues and relatives greeted the first of the nine survivors to emerge from the mine around midnight on Thursday.
The miners, exhausted but not seriously hurt, were rushed to a local hospital and are in stable and satisfactory condition, a mine spokesman said.
Rescuers continued to search for two other miners critically injured in Monday’s rockfall at the African Rainbow Minerals mine, as well as for the bodies of four men who did not survive the ordeal.
The miners — eight Lesotho nationals, two Mozambicans, four South Africans and a Swazi national — were trapped 2km underground when the rockfall blocked the shaft they were working in.
The nine survivors, who were reached late on Thursday, were taken to a place of safety underground where they were stabilised before being brought to the surface on drips and with oxygen masks strapped to their faces.
Mine chairman Patrice Motsepe told reporters that the first men to emerge from the shaft just before midnight were “very talkative”
“‘Is it Thursday?’ was the first thing one miner wanted to know. I told him it was Thursday evening,” Motsepe said.
The miners were kept alive underground with water and food fed to them through a compressed air pipe.
Rescue efforts were slow as tons of rock had to be shifted in intense heat to reached the trapped men.
Mineral and Energy Minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka on Thursday announced that there would be an investigation into the cause of the accident.
About 70000 miners estimated to have died at the country’s mines since the turn of the century.