POLAND: Hopes were fading for 15 Polish miners trapped 1km underground after an explosion yesterday at a mine in southern Poland.
Rescue teams worked against the clock to reach the men, aged between 21 and 59, trapped after an explosion killed eight other miners at the Halemba mine in the town of Ruda Slaska, 300km southwest of Warsaw.
The explosion, believed to have been caused by methane gas, damaged the mine ventilation shaft, causing a further gas build-up that increased the danger of another explosion and hampered rescue efforts.
"The rescue managing staff has decided it cannot expose the health and the life of the rescuers to danger," said Zbigniew Madej, a spokesman for the state-owned coal company, which operates the mine, after halting the search early yesterday.
Officials believe the explosion may also have damaged a pump, flooding the entire mine and making it unlikely that any survivors will be found. Tracking devices worn by the trapped men emitted no signals yesterday afternoon.
At the mine entrance, one of the men watching and waiting for news was Zbigniew Nowak, who spent five days trapped in the mine before he was rescued.
"Down there, while you're waiting to be rescued, you think of all kinds of things: about your life, your family, the way things were and the way they could have been," he said.
Miner Andrzej Pytlik said his brother-in-law, Krystian Gaszka, was one of the men trapped in the mine after offering to go down at the last minute.
"I work in the mines and I know that hope is scant because that's the truth," Mr Pytlik said.
Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his brother, President Lech Kaczynski, declared a period of mourning for the dead men after visiting the site.
The accident will reopen a long-running debate about the safety of Poland's coal mines, which have been starved of investment in the years since 1989 and have some of the worst safety records in the world.
The Halemba mine, in operation since 1959 and one of Poland's oldest, has a history of tragedy. Twenty-four people were killed in two separate accidents in 1990 and 1991.
The mine was closed last March because of security concerns over high gas concentrations. The trapped men had entered the mine to retrieve equipment worth €17 million left behind at the time.
