It could take 18 hours to reach the place where five miners are trapped underground at AngloGold Ashanti’s Tautona mine, the company said on Wednesday morning.
”The longer it takes the more our hope of finding them alive fades,” said company spokesperson Steve Lenahan.
”We had a setback on Tuesday evening when a rock panel fell, causing rescuers to start digging from scratch.”
The rockfall followed two tremors of 1,9 and 2,3 magnitude on Monday at around 2pm.
Two miners were rescued shortly after the incident. One suffered minor injuries while the second sustained back injuries and was in a stable condition in hospital.
The company said the damage took place in a production panel 2 700m below the surface.
Reacting to Monday’s rockburst, Minerals and Energy Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica said the number of miners killed underground in South Africa was ”totally unacceptable”.
”Gold mines, which have reached a [production] plateau, are the worst performers and have deteriorated by 18,5% from a fatality rate per million hours worked of 0,27 to 0,32.”
Sonjica said that in recent months coal and other mines had also shown no sign of improvement. This was despite goals set in 2003 to decrease mine-related injuries by 20% per annum.
In January, three miners died and four others were injured, two seriously, in a rockfall in the same mine. The fall was said to have been caused by a tremor of 2,4 magnitude about 3km below the surface.
The National Union of Mineworkers said Tautona had an ”unrelenting scenario of fatalities”.
”So far, according to our records, eleven fatalities have occurred in 2006 excluding the current ‘accident’, and two weeks ago one accident was also reported,” said the union’s Mike Fafuli in a statement on Tuesday.
He said there were concerns about the support system used in the panel where the trapped miners worked. – Sapa