As 45 trapped Chinese miners are pulled to safety, our thoughts turn to some of the world’s greatest mining miracles.
Chilean miners
The world watched in anticipation in October as 33 Chilean miners were pulled to the surface through a narrow rescue shaft on live television.
Scenes of jubilation erupted each time a miner arrived to a hero’s welcome above the San Jose gold and copper mine in Chile’s northern Atacama desert.
Large video screens were set up in public places across Chile to let people watch and cheer as each miner was hauled to the surface and freed.
The miners spent a record 69 days in the hot, humid bowels of the collapsed mine and, for the first 17 days, they were all believed to be dead.
Rescuers had found the men miraculously alive with a bore hole the width of a grapefruit. It served as a lifeline to pass hydration gels, water and food, as well as bibles, letters from their families and soccer videos to keep their spirits up.
Chinese mine miracles
Chinese mines are among the deadliest in the world. Thousands of miners are killed each year in explosions, floods and collapses. But the country has also been the site of some of the greatest rescues and survival stories.
Rescue workers pulled 115 miners from a mine in Xiangning, China in April 2010. The men had been trapped for more than a week after the mine flooded.
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In August 2007, workers pulled 69 miners from a flooded shaft in Henan province. The miners were given oxygen and milk through ventilation pipes while crews worked for more than three days to free them.
Most of the miners left unassisted and emerged from the mine to an applauding crowd.
The same month, two brothers were trapped in a mine for six days after a rock collapse in the Fangshan district of Beijing.
Meng Xianchen and Meng Xianyou began losing hope when the sound of digging from outside the mine stopped just over a day after the collapse. Rescuers assumed there was no chance the brothers had survived.
But after six days underground, the pair clawed their way through 66 feet of coal and rock using a pick and their hands. They suffered kidney damage from dehydration.
Australia mine miracle
Two miners also survived a rock collapse in Beaconsfield, in the Tasmania region of Australia, in April 2006.
For two weeks, Brant Webb and Todd Russell sat nearly one kilometre underground as rescue crews frantically dug through rock. Fellow miner Wayne Knight was killed in the initial collapse.
Russell and Webb raised their arms in the air as they emerged from the mine, before being ushered to two ambulances that drove away with doors open to show the crowd the miners were alive.
Pennsylvania mine rescue
One of the greatest mine rescues in recent history was in Pennsylvania in 2002. Nine miners hit an adjacent abandoned mine while using an incorrect map. Water burst through the wall and trapped them 240 feet below the surface.
Rescue workers drilled a hole into the shaft to provide air for the miners while drilling a bigger hole to bring them to the surface.
After 77 hours underground, all nine men were lifted to the surface in a metal cage.
Pennsylvania was the site of another mine miracle in 1977 when a mine in Tower City was flooded.
Nine workers were killed, but miner Ronald Adley survived in a small pocket of the mine while rescue workers dug for nearly six days.
Adley was brought to the surface with only minor cuts and bruises.
Borehole rescue
The use of a borehole in a mine rescue was first used in Pennsylvania in 1963, to rescue David Fellin and Henry Throne, two anthracite miners who were trapped in a Hazelton-area mine for two weeks.
The miners thought they were waiting to die when the historic borehole reached their small enclosure 330 feet underground, five days after a rock collapse.
The subsequent rescue effort lasted more than a week and garnered international attention as workers made another larger hole to pull the miners out.
When the workers thought they had reached the proper depth, a member of the rescue team shouted into the hole and crowds of hushed onlookers waited for a response. Faint voices could be heard, and the crowd exploded in elation.
With files from Reuters
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