32 miners rescued from Canadian mine

Nearly half of the 70 miners trapped underground by a fire in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan have been rescued, while the rest remained underground in emergency refuge rooms stocked with oxygen and supplies, a mine official said today.

The fire broke out early yesterday in the potash mine, filling the tunnels with toxic smoke and sending the miners to take refuge in the sealed emergency rooms.

Early today, 32 of the miners were brought to the surface after spending 24 hours trapped deep underground, said Gary Phillips, a spokesman for Mosaic Company, the Minneapolis-based firm that operates the potash mine.

The rest were to be brought up once rescuers determined conditions were safe, he said.

A rescue team reached one of the rooms late yesterday, after the mining company had been unable for 18 hours to establish a radio link with the 30 miners in that room. They made sure everyone was safe, and then closed them back inside until the air inside the mine could be cleared of toxic gases, company spokesman Marshall Hamilton said.

“I won’t kid you, there was a lot of relief in that,” Hamilton said. It was not immediately clear if the miners rescued early today were from that room or from others.

Workers extinguished the fire about 20 hours after it started, and were working to clear the smoke from the tunnels.

“We’d rather do this safely than quickly,” Hamilton said. The trapped miners are “safe in there for many, many hours, potentially even days.”

Rayanne Hogshaw, the sister of one of the trapped workers, said it was nerve-wracking waiting for news.

“It’s pretty scary ... my brother has two little boys at home and a fiancee, and you sit and wait and you wonder. And there’s nothing you can do,” she said.

The other 40 miners were separated into two groups in other safe rooms, and were in phone contact with rescuers.

The fire broke out in polyethylene piping around 3am local time yesterday nearly a mile underground in Esterhazy. It was not immediately clear how it started.

The miners reported smoke and quickly headed for the safe refuge rooms, which can be as large as 50 feet by 150 feet and have an internal supply of oxygen that lasts up to 36 hours, along with food, water, chairs and beds.

Within two hours, rescue teams were mobilised, each going into the mine for a few hours at a time.

Hamilton said some of the miners’ families had gathered at the mine.

“They’re a little bit tired. They’re a little bit anxious. They have confidence that we’re going to safely bring them up,” he said. “Nevertheless, they’d like to see them sooner rather than later.”

Potash is a pinkish-grey mineral used in the production of agricultural fertiliser.

The mine, which was Saskatchewan’s first potash operation when it opened in 1962, is located about 130 miles northeast of the provincial capital of Regina.

Earlier this month, 14 miners died in two separate tragedies at mines in West Virginia, USA. Two men died in a belt-line fire on January 21 at a mine in Melville, nearly three weeks after 12 men died in an explosion near Tallmansville.