South African miners rescued after 'exceptional' quake

STILFONTEIN, South Africa - Rescue teams have freed the last miners trapped in collapsed tunnels in a South African gold mine after an earthquake and recovered the body of a miner who died, officials say.


Forty miners were trapped about 1.5 miles underground near Stilfontein, a town 97 miles southwest of Johannesburg, from about 10.15am (11.15pm Wed NZT)  when the earthquake happened, mining company DRDGOLD officials said. One miner was still missing.


"We now have 15 of the 16 miners who were trapped accounted for, and one is a fatality. Of those, four are injured. We have paramedics treating them underground," DRDGOLD spokesman James Duncan told Reuters, as some of the grime covered men emerged from the mine shaft into waiting ambulances.


The magnitude 5.0 quake, termed by local seismologists as "very exceptional" for the area, had an epicentre near Stilfontein.


More than 100 workers, including rescue volunteers from mines across South Africa worked underground to free the trapped men, who included several with broken bones and crash injuries.


"The area is fairly remote and communications were difficult. The guys kept going and managed to find a way through a relatively small opening," Michael Marriott, DRDGOLD divisional director of South African operations said.


"We expect to have them all up within two hours."


The quake, which jolted buildings as far away as Johannesburg, injured 23 miners at DRDGOLD's North West mines, and others in Stilfontein.


Marriott said the quake, the worst in his 30-year mining career caused access tunnels to collapse, trapping miners close to the face of the gold reef.


Mine officials had decided not to send the night shift down, but operations might resume soon in the seven unaffected shafts of the eight shaft mine, he said.


The affected shaft accounts for about 15 per cent of the mine's production which itself contributes about 60 per cent of DRDGOLD's South African output.


THOUSANDS EVACUATED


"There is quite serious damage," police Superintendent Louis Jacobs told Reuters. "We are aware of 38 people that were injured, but they are minor injuries, no serious injuries."


Part of a block of flats collapsed and police sealed off the town's central shopping area. Windows were shattered in some buildings and others suffered structural damage.


The gold firm evacuated about three quarters of the 3,200 miners underground when the quake hit the area, a key mining region for South Africa, the world's biggest gold and platinum producer.


DRDGOLD said its seismic monitoring system picked up four large seismic events between 10.15 and 10.22 and a number of smaller ones. About eight tremors were recorded.


Experts at the Council for Geoscience said small earthquakes triggered by underground mining operations happen in South Africa on an almost daily basis, but Wednesday's was exceptional.


"It is difficult to determine the cause. The magnitude tells us that it is most probably a re-activation of an old fault ... a secondary effect of mining," said Ian Saunders, a council geotechnologist.


Naturally occurring earthquakes are rare in South Africa. The last major one, which occurred in 1969 north of Cape Town measured 6.3 on the Richter scale and caused extensive damage.


- REUTERS