Miner found alive after 17 years undergroun
A
group of coal miners from the western province of Xinjiang, had an
unbelievable surprise when the gallery they were excavating opened up on
a section of an old mine, that was abandoned 17 years ago after an
earthquake that caused some large sections of the tunnels to collapse.
While they were exploring the galleries, they stumbled upon Cheung Wai, a
59-year old survivor from the 1997 accident, obviously in a rather bad
shape. He was immediately taken to the hospital where a complete
evaluation of his physical and mental states will be done over the next
weeks.
He managed to survive thanks to an
emergency stash of rice and water, stored in an underground depot,
conceived especially for this kind of case. The man complemented his
diet by catching and eating the countless rats that pullulate in the
mine, as well as collecting large quantities of some sort of
phosphorescent moss, which constituted his only source of vitamins. Even
though he was suffering from great physical and mental stress, he
managed to give proper burials to all of his comrades, spending almost a
year in this great selfless act.
Mining accidents remain common in China
despite growing measures by the government to reduce the problem, which
killed more than 4000 miners a year at the beginning of the millenium.
Over the last years, the authorities have been cracking down on many
unregulated mining operations, which account for almost 80 percent of
the country’s 16,000 mines. The closure of about 1,000 dangerous small
mines last year helped to cut in half the average number of miners
killed, to about six a day, in the first months of this year, according
to governmental statistics.
The case of Mr. Cheung remains unique
however, and constitutes a world record, according to the universally
recognized authority on record-breaking achievement, Guinness. The
former record for surviving underground was of 142 days and was held by a
british man named Geoff Smith. He had been voluntarily buried in the
backyard of the Railway Inn, his favorite pub, with the intention of
breaking the record.
No comments:
Post a Comment