Rescuers in a flooded mine in southern Russia raced against time on Monday to reach 13 men believed trapped in an airpocket with no food and air likely to run out within a day or two.
Tunnellers are hewing their way through a 57m-thick coal seam from a mine adjacent to the Zapadnaya mine where the men are believed to have made their way to an air pocket after water from an underground lake flooded the shaft where they were working last week, a regional official said.
Fears mounted over the fate of the 13, cut off from another group of 33 who were also trapped by the water but were rescued on Saturday.
The rescuers have so far cut through 33m of the seam and are also fighting to stem the flooding that is causing the water level to continue to rise at a rate of more than half a metre an hour, said Irina Chertvertakova, spokesperson for the
regional governor.
An official said on Sunday that if water levels continued to rise at the same speed, the air in the shaft could be exhausted within 40 hours, in other words by Tuesday.
Although the fate and precise whereabouts of the 13 men were still unknown, tunnelling towards the mine’s northern sector had been ordered ”because that is where they appeared to be heading, according to the testimony of the men we brought out,” Chertvertakova said.
Rescuers have begun installing five metal tubes 12m tall and 1m in diameter in the flooded shaft ”to serve as a stabilising foundation for stones we are using to keep the water out.
”One hundred and thirty trucks loaded with stones are waiting” at the entrance to the mine, she said.
”If the inflowing water cannot be stemmed by Tuesday morning, the rescuers will still have another six hours to carry on digging before they are flooded out. [However] there is a high probability they will be able to complete the tunnel by then.”
Deputy Emergencies Minister Alexander Moskalets said that several tons of material, equivalent to a volume greater than that of the central shaft, had already been poured into the mine in a bid to stauch the flow of water.
Engineers were examining the possible use of submarine devices equipped with cameras to explore the lower regions of the mine, he said.
No contact has yet been established with the 13 men at the spot where they are believed to have taken refuge.
Rescuers are hoping that the men succeeded in reaching the spot in a rising tunnel that provided an air pocket.
Among the missing men is Vasily Avdeyev, the mine’s director, who was making his first visit to the shaft at a depth of about 800m.
The temperature underground was measured on Saturday at more than 20 degrees Celsius, and experts said that if the men had found a good air pocket they could survive for several days.
A total of 71 men were working at the mine at the time of the flooding last Thursday but 25 managed to scramble to the surface.
The first nine of the 33 men rescued on Saturday have been released from hospital, the news agency said.
All 33 were said to be out of danger, although a few were suffering from hypothermia. — Sapa-AFP