Vigil held for trapped miners in Colombia

AMAGA, Colombia - Relatives held a resigned vigil yesterday outside a coal mine in northwestern Colombia where dozens of miners were trapped and feared dead after an explosion that killed at least 16 workers.

The fiery blast at the San Fernando mine, believed caused by a methane gas buildup, tore through an access tunnel that is 1.2 miles long and drops to a depth of 500 feet. There were 70 to 80 workers in the mine at the time, officials said.

Provincial disaster coordinator John Rendon said the Wednesday night blast collapsed part of the tunnel. But Antioquia state mining secretary Nicolas Lopez said rescue workers who had been able to get .43 miles into the tunnel and had found it intact. The tunnel has cement-reinforced steel arches, he said, but high levels of methane and carbon monoxide were impeding the entry of rescue workers to extraction areas where most of the trapped workers were believed located.

A shift change was in progress when the blast occurred, officials said, and two injured workers managed to escape.

"I felt the explosion and it lifted me up. I felt the flames on me," a surviving miner, Walter Restrepo, 31, told RCN Television from a hospital bed where he was recovering from burns.

Lopez said the mine's ventilation system was damaged in the blast but had resumed operation. There was no way to communicate, however, with the trapped miners to know if any were alive and receiving oxygen.

Rescue efforts were called off at dusk and anxious relatives of the missing workers moved to a nearby sports arena where the bodies were collected for identification.

"It's impossible that anyone is alive," said Diana Sepulveda, 28, whose husband, Wilson Salinas, 25, had begun work at the mine just eight days earlier.