Rescuers at a coal mine in southern Russia had hours left on Tuesday to save 13 miners believed trapped for the fifth day, as they got to within metres of the spot where they believe the men are.
Crews were hewing their way through a coal seam to the place in the Zapadnaya mine where the men were thought to have taken refuge after icy water flooded the shafts where they were working on Thursday last week.
Just before 0900 GMT, rescuers used a drill to bore through a tiny hole of a diametre of 3,2 centimetres, but themselves remained three metres away from the shaft, rescue officials said.
No water flowed out from the hole, proving that the area was not completely flooded, the officials said, adding that the emergency team would use dynamite to blast a passageway 1,4 metres high and 2,5 metres wide.
But time was running out, with water continuing to slowly fill the mine.
Irina Chetvertakova, a spokesperson for the regional governor, said that it would become impossible to pump air into the shaft by 1500 GMT and 10 hours later the mine would be entirely flooded.
”By 6:00 pm the mine shaft will be so full of water that it will be impossible to get air into there anymore. And within another 10 hours the water will reach the place where the miners are,” she said.
Although the fate and precise whereabouts of the 13 men were still unknown, tunnelling towards the mine’s northern sector had been ordered because miners who escaped the scene had pinpointed that location as their likely refuge.
Rescue officials have had no contact with the trapped men. ”The tunnellers haven’t heard any sounds from Zapadnaya, where the miners are believed to be,” a spokesperson told Interfax.
Rossiya state television reported that once the tunnel had been completed, rescuers would go inside in small separate groups of four to six people because of the limited time left if lives are to be saved.
Rescuers in hard hats could be seen emerging from the mine shaft where the digging was taking place, with exhausted, blackened faces. Rossiya said in just four days they had dug a tunnel of 50 metres, which usually takes a month.
As they cut though the seam, rescuers also fought to stem the inflow of water, which continued to fill Zapadnya’s tunnels hundreds of meters below the surface at a rate of more than half a metre an hour.
Rescuers are hoping that the 13 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 had been named to the post a few days before the accident.
The temperature underground was measured on Saturday at more than 20C, and experts said that if the men had found a good air pocket they could survive for several days.
On Saturday, rescuers lifted to the surface 33 other miners who were trapped when an underground lake broke through to the mine’s tunnels on Thursday.
A total of 71 men were working at the mine at the time of the flooding, but 25 managed to scramble to the surface. – Sapa-AFP