Update 7.01pm
THE FOURTH AND final miner has now been found dead at the Gleision Colliery near Swansea in Wales.
Local police confirmed the fourth body was found dead at 6pm tonight, according to BBC News.
South Wales Police chief constable Peter Vaughan said, “I can’t begin to imagine what the families have been going through.”
The four local men have been named as Charles Breslin, 62, David Powell, 50, Gerry Jenkins, 39 and Phillip Hill, 45.
The fire service, which was involved in the rescue and recovery operation, said all four men had been found in close proximity. All four bodies have now been recovered from the mine.
Update 3.15pm
A THIRD MINER has now been found dead at the Gleision Colliery near Swansea in Wales.
Police have confirmed the third fatality, which follows the discovery earlier of two bodies in the flooded mine. Rescuers are continuing to search for a fourth man.
Former Welsh Secretary Peter Hain has told Sky News that families of the men have been going through “hell” as they wait for news. He said that the water must be pumped out of the mine before the bodies can be identified.
Update 1.35pm
POLICE IN SOUTH Wales have confirmed that a second body has been found at the Gleision Colliery, near Swansea following the earlier discovery of a man’s body in the flooded mine this morning.
Four miners had been missing since yesterday morning. Two miners are still considered missing and police and rescue services say they are still treating the operation as a search and rescue one.
Earlier…
ONE OF THE four miners trapped 90 metres below ground in a flooded mine in south Wales has died, police have said.
Rescuers have been working since yesterday to free the men who have been trapped in the flooded mine at the Gleision Colliery near Cilybebyll in Pontardwe for over a day, BBC News reports.
As the rescue effort continued last night, police said that the body of one of the four men was discovered.
Late last night divers had to abandon their efforts to rescue the men after about 30 metres due to the hazardous conditions in the water, the Guardian reports.
The trapped miners have been named as Charles Breslin, 62; David Powell, 50; and Garry Jenkins, 39, from the Swansea Valley; and Phillip Hill, 45, of Neath but it is not yet clear which one of the miners has died.
Chris Margetts from the South Wales Fire and Rescue Service explained in a press conference how the dead miner was located:
The miner that we found was in a different section of the mine. He was basically on the exit side on the body of water.So therefore the search and rescue mission continues because there are still air pockets on the other side of the body of water and there is a blockage down there yet to be searched.
So it is quite possible under the circumstances that as the incident has occurred, the team has split.
Local police superintendent Phil Davies told the press that a ”dynamic and ongoing search and rescue operation” was continuing and rescuers remain hopeful that the three other miners can be located and brought to safety.
Sky News reports that in total seven men were in the mine when a flash food occurred just after 9am yesterday morning.
Three of the miners made it to safety. They have been named as Mark Lloyd, 45; Malcolm Fifield and Andrew Powell, 23, who is said to be the son of David Powell, one of the trapped men.
Rescue teams are using expert listening device that can detect movement deep underground and fresh rescuers have been brought in this morning to relieve crews that have been working for at least 12 hours straight.
-Additional reporting by Sinéad O’Carroll
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say