A rescued miner is taken out of the flooded Wangjialing Coalmine in Xiangning county, north China's Shanxi Province, yesterday. Rescuers have pulled 115 miners alive from the mine after being trapped for eight days since the accident occurred. Photo: Xinhua

By Song Shengxia

In an extremely rare and unlikely turn of events, 115 miners were pulled out alive Monday from the flooded Wangjialing coalmine in northern Shanxi Province, eight days after being trapped underground, officials said.

And 38 more miners could still be saved, according to Liu Dezheng, a spokesman for the rescue operation, at a press conference Monday.

The identities of the rescued and trapped miners haven't yet been confirmed.

Following the mine's flooding in the early hours of March 28, a team of more than 3,000 rescuers has been working around the clock to pump water from the flooded shafts in order to get to the miners.

The rescued miners were part of a larger group of 261 working in the pit when it flooded. A total of 108 workers managed to escape immediately, leaving 153 underground with any hope of rescue dwindling by the day.

"Rescuers are continuing the search for 38 trapped miners. The rescue operation is still challenging," said Wang Jun, the governor of Shanxi.

A live broadcast Monday by China Central Television (CCTV) showed survivors wrapped in blankets and uniforms lifted out of the shaft as clothes covered their eyes. Rescue workers cheered and carried the men to ambulances, which rushed them to five local hospitals.

"It is a miracle in China's history of mining rescues," said Luo Lin, head of the State Administration of Work Safety, who was at the site overseeing the rescue operation.

"This is probably one of the most amazing rescues in the history of mining anywhere," David Feickert, a coalmine safety adviser to the Chinese government, told the AP Monday.

Chen Hao, office director at the Workers' Hospital of Shanxi Aluminium Factory, where the first nine workers were admitted, told the Global Times that there were 36 workers receiving treatment at that hospital, and he was expecting more to come.

"They are all doing fine, with their blood pressure and heart rate normal," he said, adding that some have managed to speak. "They are blindfolded because they have been in the dark a long time."

Xu Lixin, deputy dean of the Jishan Zhengshen Hospital, said, "A worker told us that he survived the ordeal by eating whatever he could find underground - pieces of paper, bark - and drinking the murky water in the tunnel along with some coworkers."

Fearing that he'd miss the chance to be rescued, one miner said he forced himself to stay awake for the past three days, Xu said.

Some miners attached themselves by belts to the wall of the mine to avoid falling into the water while sleeping, and they hung there for three days before climbing into a mining cart that floated by, CCTV reported.

A glimmer of hope emerged Friday when rescuers said they heard banging on a metal pipe underground. The first nine miners were pulled out alive shortly after midnight Monday, 190 hours after the Wangjialing mine filled with underground water from what experts said were probably adjacent mines that had flooded after they were abandoned.

The mine, affiliated with the State-owned Huajin Coking Coal company, is a key project in Linfen city approved by the provincial government. The China Coal Group and Shanxi Meijiao each hold 50 percent stakes in Huajin.

According to the State Administration of Work Safety, a preliminary investigation last week found that the mine's managers ignored warnings by workers of water leaks before the flooding and ordered the workers to continue mining.

Disputed number

Some media outlets have reported that more workers could be trapped than officials have claimed.

On Thursday, Zhang Dejiang, China's vice premier, urged the rescue headquarters to release a detailed list of workers trapped. He also said the accident exposed loopholes in hiring employees and in coalmine management failures.

A day later, Liu Dezheng, the rescue headquarters spokesman, confirmed that a total of 153 workers were trapped in the mine, without identifying them.

At Saturday's press conference, Li Hui, chairman of the trade union of China Coal Group No. 1 construction company, read the names of 153 trapped workers and their places of origin, without releasing detailed information online or giving the media documents on the workers' identities.

Shanxi, which has 260 billion tons of known reserves, or about one third of the entire nation's, has been plagued by mining disasters.

Frequent accidents have apparently led to frequent shifts in the province's top leadership. Five mayors have been replaced over the last five years in Linfen, and four previous incumbent governors all served for no more than a year in the province, a situation summarized by a well-circulated expression, "It is extremely hard to be an official in Shanxi Province."

Since one year ago, the Shanxi provincial government has reportedly stepped up efforts to reshuffle its mining industry by merging private and small mines.

The number of coalmine accidents also dropped by 40 percent from 2008 to 2009. A total of 202 people died in 71 mining accidents in Shanxi last year. The province plans to slash the number of mines to about 100 from 2,200 by the year's end.

The country registered about 2,700 coalmine deaths last year, 18 percent fewer than a year earlier, and almost half the total from 2005, according to the national energy authority.

Du Jiping, a professor with the China University of Mining and Technology, told the Global Times that the Wangjialing flooding could have been avoided if the water pockets had been properly detected and drained beforehand.

He said that whether a mine is safe has nothing to do with its ownership. "A mine must be closed down if it is found to be prone to natural disasters," he noted.

Guo Qiang and Xinhua contributed to this story