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Safety chambers save 72 miners

TORONTO - Seventy-two Canadian potash miners walked away from an underground fire and toxic smoke on Monday after being locked down overnight in airtight chambers packed with enough oxygen, food and water for several days.

The company said the textbook case of safe underground mining was due to those chambers, extensive training of rescue workers and support from the rural community.

"I'm almost getting choked up thinking about how well this team worked together," Marshall Hamilton, a spokesman for Mosaic Co., the Minneapolis-based owner of the mine, said after he got word that all the men were evacuated safely.

Analysts said the rescue could serve as a lesson for mine companies in the United States, China and other countries.

"It really looks like a textbook recovery to me," said Davitt McAteer, head of the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration under former President Bill Clinton.

McAteer is leading the investigation into the deaths of 12 miners earlier this month at the Sago coal mine in West Virginia.

McAteer said the safety chambers in the Mosaic mine in Canada's central Saskatchewan province were key to the miners' survival.

"I think that the question of the existence of the chamber that provided oxygen, food and protection is fundamentally important in any kind of a mine," he said. He acknowledged, however, that potash mines are not nearly as dangerous as those for coal - where an initial explosion can provoke a secondary one 10 times as strong.

There are no such chambers in U.S. mines, he said, because in the late 1970s, the U.S. government determined there was no material strong enough to withstand the secondary explosion. Since then, he said, NASA and the Defense Department have created stronger materials.

"If you can build a black box to withstand an explosion in an airplane, why can't you build one to escape an explosion in a mine?" he asked.

He said Canada, Australia and the United States run some of the safest mines in the world, with the United States reporting a record low 57 mine deaths last year.

Fourteen miners died in two separate accidents at mines in West Virginia this month. Two men died in a fire Jan. 21 at a mine in Melville, nearly three weeks after 12 men died after an explosion near Tallmansville.

The number of mining deaths in Canada was not immediately available. The Saskatchewan Mining Association said there was only one mining death in the province last year.

China, where more than 5,000 coal miners die each year, has the world's deadliest mining industry.

The mine in Esterhazy, about 130 miles northeast of the provincial capital of Regina, was Saskatchewan's first potash operation when it opened in 1962. Saskatchewan is North America's largest producer of potash, a pinkish-grey mineral used in the production of agricultural fertilizer, soap and glass ceramics.

The fire first broke out early Sunday in the mine's polyethylene piping, filling the tunnels with toxic smoke and forcing the 72 miners to seek refuge in the sealed chambers until the fire was out and the air safe to breathe.

Greg Harris, one of the miners, said he was never concerned about his safety as he played checkers with colleagues in the refuge room waiting to be rescued.

"Everything is good," Harris told the Canadian Press from his home. "Communication was excellent. We had no problems whatsoever."

Mosaic chief executive Fritz Corrigan pledged a thorough investigation into the fire.

[Last modified January 31, 2006, 00:31:49]