Company begins evacuating trapped miners

CARLETONVILLE, South Africa -- Some 3,000 gold miners were trapped a mile underground Wednesday when falling pipe damaged the elevator, but the company began evacuating workers through a smaller shaft and estimated it would take 10 hours to get them all out safely.

There were no injuries and there was no immediate danger to any of the workers in Harmony Gold Mining Co.'s Elandsrand Mine, company and union officials said.

Peter Bailey, health and safety chairman for the National Mineworkers Union, said the first 74 men reached the surface shortly after 1 a.m. today. "They are all doing well," he said.

Deon Boqwana, regional chairman for the union, said there was ventilation for the miners waiting below ground and officials were in contact with the men by a telephone line in the mine.

"They are still in good condition but are angry, hungry, frustrated and want to get out of there," Boqwana said.

He said the miners were a little more than a mile below the surface in a mine that at some points is about a 1 1/2 miles deep. The mine is outside Carletonville, a town near Johannesburg.

The company said the pipes of a collapsed water column fell in the shaft that holds the big elevator that carries miners in and out. The pipe extensively damaged the elevator's steel framework and electrical feeder cables, the company said.

Harmony's acting chief executive, Graham Briggs, said earlier on MSNBC that managers had lowered food and water to the trapped miners, which was the mine's entire morning shift. He said the company would evacuate the miners using a smaller cage in another shaft.

Boqwana said the smaller cage being used to bring miners out can hold about 75 miners at a time.

He said it normally takes three minutes to reach the surface but would be slower because rescuers were being careful. He said the evacuation would take about 10 hours.

Bailey, the union health chairman, said the miners were "very afraid," hungry and thirsty after being underground for hours.

"Some of these mineworkers started duty on Tuesday evening. It is now Wednesday night and they are still underground," he said.

A spokesman for the union, Lesiba Seshoka, said charged that the mine was not properly maintained.

"Our guys there tell us that they have raised concerns about the whole issue of maintenance of shafts with the mine (managers) but they have not been attended to," he said.

There was no immediate comment from the company on the issue.

Last year, 199 mineworkers died in accidents, mostly rock falls, the government Mine Health and Safety Council reported in September.