POLAND: Polish rescuers find 13 more bodies from coal mine disaster in Ruda Slaska taking the death toll to 21

Polish rescuers found 13 more bodies overnight Wednesday (November 22) from Tuesday's (November 21) coal mine disaster, taking the death toll so far to 21, officials said on Thursday (November 23). They said the rescuers were searching for two more miners who had been trapped after an underground methane gas explosion at the mine in the town of Ruda Slaska, about 300 km (190 miles) southwest of the capital Warsaw. "The rescue teams have reached the fifteen bodies, they are still searching for two bodies," Zbigniew Madej, spokesman for the state-owned company Polish Coal Co., told Reuters. Rescue work had been suspended on Wednesday because conditions were too dangerous due to methane gas still in the mine. The miners were in a shaft more than 1 km (0.6 miles) underground when the blast occurred. Poland's state-run mining industry, built up before the fall of communism in 1989 and starved of investment for years, has suffered hundreds of deaths over the last few decades. President Lech Kaczynski, who visited the mine on Wednesday, told reporters there would be a public inquiry into the cause of the disaster. He said he had indications some of the miners were not experienced and not sufficiently qualified. Officials said the blast appeared to have damaged an underground water pump, flooding the area and leaving little hope anybody could be found alive. Family members waited patiently at the pit for news and were offered counselling by local doctors. "What can I say...it is the families that suffer the worst, our thoughts are with them...for us it is just unbelievable. Just a couple of days ago we worked alongside one another and today they are gone,"said one unidentified miner. The Halemba mine is one of the oldest in Poland and has been in operation since 1957. It lies at the heart of the Silesia region's industrial belt that has been the scene of several disasters. In 1990, 19 miners were killed in the same pit by a gas explosion.

ITN Source | November 23, 2006

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