Trapped Chinese miners recall underground ordeal

BEIJING, Aug 3 (Reuters) Dozens of Chinese miners trapped underground for three days pooled their food to stay alive and talked three desperate young men out of trying to swim hundreds of metres under water to escape, state media said today.

The miners were trapped on Sunday morning as a flash flood caused by heavy rain surged through an old shaft and submerged passage ways in their colliery in Shan county in the central province of Henan.

All of them walked out of the pit soaked, weak but safe on Wednesday after hundreds of rescuers worked around the clock to pump out water and even tried to dispel rain clouds with 400 special cannon shots.

The 69 were fed milk down a ventilation pipe which they collected and drank from their helmets.

Their 75-hour ordeal was marked by panic, tears and despair but also by hope and mutual help, the China Daily said today.

They gathered all the lamps and used only six at a time to preserve energy and thought about diverting the water to a nearby empty pit, the English-language newspaper said.

''Three young men, agitated, attempted swimming through the inundated section, but were talked out of it,'' it said.

''It would have been suicidal to swim for several hundred metres under water,'' miner Guo Shitun, 40, was quoted as saying.

The intact ventilation pipe and a telephone line were key to the miners' survival, a rare occurrence for China's coal mining industry in which 4,746 workers died last year, with fatal accidents happening on an almost daily basis.

Rescuers blew air and later sent hundreds of litres of milk down the pipe to keep the miners alive.

''Before that, the miners had pooled whatever little food they had brought with them and devised a ration system,'' the China Daily said.

Officials and relatives were able to encourage the miners to hold on by the phone, the paper said.

Hou Haifeng, 22, who has a 6-month-old daughter, talked to his wife twice via the line.

''Although I assured her I was OK, in my heart I felt sad. But I could sense how worried everyone was up there,'' Hou was quoted as saying.

''I remember one official told me ... 'I'll take you all for a drink when you come up'.'' REUTERS RJ BD1034