Two brothers survive in collapsed coal mine for nearly six days

TWO Chinese brothers clawed their way out of a collapsed coal mine after surviving underground for nearly six days, shocking grieving relatives, state media said yesterday.

The men were trapped 35 to 40 yards away from the mine entrance but clawed their way out with a pick. They had no food and little water, drinking each other’s urine to survive, according to media reports.

The China Daily played up a report about Meng Xianchen and Meng Xianyou, who surfaced on Friday morning after more than 130 hours trapped in an illegal mine in Beijing’s Fangshan district.

Grieving relatives went to the mine entrance early Friday to burn ceremonial currency for the men’s souls to use in the afterlife, and left food offerings of steamed buns, cakes and canned goods, the Beijing News said.

Hours later, word was received that the brothers had tunnelled out.

“Then, we were too upset to eat. Now, we are too excited to eat,” their brother Meng Xianfeng was quoted as saying.

The Mengs suffered kidney damage from lack of water, but had no other major injuries, doctors said.

Rescue work was halted after experts said there was no chance that the brothers from Inner Mongolia had survived, the Beijing News said. Efforts to extract them would have put rescuers at risk.

In the Shandong flood the Xinhua News Agency said $6.6 million (€4.84m) was donated for the missing miners and their families.

The China Daily newspaper ran a front-page story about the Meng brothers’ “miraculous” survival, but official reports made little mention of another mining disaster in Shandong province that left 181 workers trapped in flooded coal shafts and presumed dead.

In that accident, Chinese media has focused on efforts to pump out water: There has been no word on the fate of the miners 10 days after they became trapped when a swollen river breached a dike.