Mining disaster survivors

After the scenes of wild celebration in Chile when it was revealed that 33 men trapped on August 5^th by a tunnel collapse at the San Jose copper and gold mine are still alive, comes the sober realisation that it may take four more months to free them.

They do have access to some water, but they have been living on two spoonfuls of tuna, a sip of milk and a biscuit every 48 hours. They are in a shelter, said to be about the size of a one-bedroom flat, though some argue they have about a mile of space to move around in.

There have been other extraordinary escapes after mining accidents. Europe’s worst was at Courrieres in northern France in 1906, when nearly 1,100 were killed. Twenty days after the explosion, to general astonishment, 13 survivors emerged from the pit. They had lost all sense of time, and believed they had been trapped for only four or five days.

After China’s Tangshan earthquake of 1976, some coalminers survived for 15 days below ground without food or clean water. They too believed they had been trapped for only a few days, but their bodies told the true story. They had each lost up to three stones. For more details, see A Disastrous History of the World.

The San Francisco earthquake

This day…..104 years ago saw one of history’s most famous earthquakes - the one that struck San Francisco at just before a quarter past five on the morning of April 18, 1906. It measured about 7.8, with its epicentre around two miles from the city.

For all its fame, it is not one of the deadliest the world has seen. The final death toll was around 3,000. (China’s Tangshan earthquake of 1976, for example, killed at least 240,000 and possibly many more – see also my blogs of July 28, 2009, Jan 22 and 24 and Feb 9, 2010.)

As with so many disasters, it was the aftermath rather than the quake itself that claimed most victims. Some people were drowned when water mains burst, but far more perished in fires that quickly engulfed the largely wooden city. Within half an hour, 50 had broken out, and they burned for three days.

More than 28,000 buildings were destroyed, including every downtown store, and nearly three quarters of San Francisco had to be rebuilt or extensively repaired, while more than half the population was made homeless. Many of the new buildings were designed to be resistant to fire and earthquake, and five years later the city hosted the world’s fair.

China - secret disasters

In China an activist who has been investigating the Sichuan earthquake of 2008 has been jailed for five years for inciting subversion. Although the charges against Tan Zuoren did not formally relate to his investigation, human rights groups claim they were the real reason for the prosecution.

He was arrested while preparing a report into the collapse of school buildings during the quake. In many areas, schools seemed to have fared worse than neighbouring buildings, and parents alleged that corruption had led to poor building standards. Altogether 80,000 people died.

A Hong Kong television crew was prevented from attending Tan Zuoren’s trial, and had their hotel room searched for alleged possession of drugs.

China has a record of secrecy in the aftermath of disasters. After the great Tangshan quake of 1976 it took two years for the authorities to announce that 242,000 had been killed, and many still believe the true number was much higher, while details of the Henan floods of 1975 – caused by shoddily built dams – were suppressed for nearly 30 years. Human rights groups believe that more than 200,000 people died.

Survivors and great escapes - 2

Eleven days after the Haiti earthquake, a 24 year old man in remarkably good shape has been pulled from the rubble of a hotel. Wismond Exantus, who worked in its grocery store, said he survived on soft drinks and little bits of food. On Friday, an 84 year old woman and a 21 year old man were rescued. Emmannuel Buso had had nothing to eat or drink.

Mr Exantus’s rescue came shortly after the Haitian government had officially called off the search for survivors. On January 16, I blogged about some other remarkable escapes after disasters.

It was long after the search for survivors of the Courrieres coal mine explosion of 1906 in northern France had been abandoned that 13 miners emerged. They had lived for 20 days on food taken down by miners to eat in their lunch breaks and by slaughtering a horse. They had lost all sense of time, and believed they had been trapped for only four or five days.

In China’s Tangshan earthquake of 1976, miners working underground had a much better chance of survival than people on the surface. Only 13 out of 15,000 perished, but some were trapped for 15 days without food or clean water. They too thought they had been entombed for only a few days, but their emaciated bodies told the real story. For more on both disasters, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Haiti in historical perspective

If the estimates we are now hearing of 200,000 people killed in the Haiti earthquake are accurate, that would make it probably the eighth deadliest in history. The worst may have been one that hit the eastern Mediterranean region in 1201 or 1202, devastating countries like Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Palestine. Some say this disaster claimed more than a million lives, though many of these may actually have perished in the famine that was raging through Egypt about the same time.

Better documented is the quake that devastated Shaanxi province in China in 1556, killing up to 830,000 people, many of whom had been living in man-made caves they had dug into the soft soil. Perhaps third worst was the quake of 526 that destroyed Antioch in modern-day Turkey. Known as "the Fair Crown of the Orient", it had been the third biggest city in the Roman Empire, and was the place where the word "Christian" was first used to describe the followers of Jesus. The death toll was said to be 300,000.

In more modern times, the Chinese earthquake in Tangshan in 1976 was officially said to have killed 242,000, though the Chinese government did not admit to this figure until three years afterwards. Unofficial estimates put the death toll as high as 655,000. More recently, the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 claimed 230,000 victims.

Survivors and great escapes

There has not been much good news from Haiti, but yesterday we got a small ration. Fifty hours after the earthquake struck, a two year old boy was found alive by a Spanish rescue team in the ruins of his home in Port-au-Prince. Redjeson Hausteen Claude’s face broke into a smile when he was handed to his weeping mother.

On July 4 last year, I wrote in this blog about what appeared to be the unusual ability of children to survive air crashes. And after the great Sicily earthquake of 1908, which killed perhaps 150,000 people, a group of Russian sailors, who played a much-admired role in the rescue effort, found two babies safe and well under a heap of rubble. They were said to have been laughing and playing with the buttons on their clothes.

There have also been astonishing escapes involving adults, of course. Twenty days after the Courrieres mining disaster in France in 1906, 13 survivors emerged from the pit, long after the rescue effort had been abandoned, and following the Chinese Tangshan earthquake of 1976, there were miners who kept going for 15 days underground without food or clean water.

Tanshan + 33

On this day….33 years ago, the Chinese industrial city of Tangshan was devastated by the country’s worth earthquake in four centuries. In just 20 seconds, 20 square miles was shaken into rubble.

Survivors said the ground moved around like the sea. Tangshan was the site of one of China’s biggest coalmining complexes, and about 15,000 miners were working underground when the quake struck.

Bizarrely, only 13 of them were killed, whereas above ground the total was at least 242,000. That was the number that the Communist authorities officially admitted to three years later, though by then there were already claims that secret documents had put the death toll at more than 655,000.

There is a belief in China that earthquakes go hand in hand with political upheaval. Six weeks after Tangshan, Chairman Mao died. For the full story see A Disastrous History of the World.