Rescue teams find five bodies; 115 rescued miners are in good conditions, begin talking to media about their eight days underground, eating sawdust, strapped to shaft walls to avoid falling into the water.

Beijing (AsiaNews) – Efforts to reach miners still trapped in the flooded coal pit in Wangjialing (Shanxi) continued after five bodies were recovered and 115 miners were rescued yesterday after more than a week underground.   Rescuers are hopeful of locating “the 33 miners believed to remain trapped underground,” China’s official news agency Xinhua reported.

Details are emerging as to how the trapped workers were able to survive inside the mine after it was flooded when workers digging a tunnel broke into an old shaft filled with water.

Some survivors described eating sawdust and tree bark and drinking murky water, strapped to shaft walls by their belts to avoid falling into the water whilst sleeping.

The first to make it to the surface, just after midnight on Sunday, was 36-year-old Jin Qunhong.

"How fantastic to be on the surface again," Xinhua quoted one 27-year-old survivor as saying after the rescue.

"Strive with all your might and make each second count, doing everything possible to rescue the workers who are trapped," President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao said in a message reprinted by Xinhua.

Live coverage on China Central Television showed the rescue operations, a rare event in a country where thousands of miners die each year in underground accidents.

The miners’ rescue has been greeted as a miracle by public opinion and the Chinese media, which have stressed the great work by rescuers and local and national governments.

For years, China has steadily held the record of the highest number of deadly mining accidents. The country’s energy needs are such that many mining companies and local government officials have opted for shortcuts to increase profits at the expense of safety.

In the past three years, the government has adopted tighter mine safety rules, but enforcement remains is lax. Corruption is rampant, which enables local government and mining officials to keep open mines otherwise bound for closure. Accidents and victims are often concealed. Party rules banning party officials from investing in the mining sector are often disregarded.

Unofficially, some 20,000 miners die each year, but the real number is hard to come by since Beijing tends to sweep the problem under the carpet.

Media coverage of the Wangjialing mining accident is in this sense quite exceptional, and so is its propaganda value.

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