A recovery team is trying to find the bodies of the five men who died while illegally mining near Barberton, said the team leader on Tuesday.
”We’re on the site. We’ve decided to try to recover the bodies,” said Mines Rescue Services (MRS) general manager Christo de Klerk from the site.
”We’re going to work right around the clock.”
He said they were working in a small vertical shaft about 3m to 4m long and were being guided by a man who was with the miners when they died in a rockfall.
Due to the lack of space, MRS is lowering two people at a time into the shaft, replacing them with a new team when needed. The team then uses buckets and shovels to dig out the blocked tunnel by hand.
De Klerk described the operation as a ”very long, difficult process” and said the five miners were definitely dead so it was not a rescue operation.
”It’s definitely a recovery operation, there’s no doubt about it.”
The recovery could take up to two days.
MRS is an independent company called in to help with the operation.
Police found the area where the miners’ bodies were on Saturday after the accident was reported the day before.
They were all believed to have died days earlier following an accident while illegally mining in the Fairview mine, a section abandoned and closed off in the 1930s or 1940s.
Miners often illegally break into disused sections of mines to dig for gold, frequently for syndicates. — Sapa