Thirty-two hundred miners were trapped more than a mile underground today after a falling pipe damamged the gold mine’s shaft, according to reports.
An official from Harmony Gold Mining Co., Africa’s third-largest gold producer, told MSNBC-TV that no one was injured.
A pipe broke “from fatigue” and fell 1.4 miles down the shaft, Bloomberg News reported.
Workers are “reconfiguring” an adjacent shaft, which transports waste, to lift the miners to the surface.
“It caused a lot of damage to the steelwork and electrical feeder cords,” spokeswoman Amelia Soares told Bloomberg News. “We don’t know how long it can take” to get the miners safely to the surface.
Graham Briggs, the CEO of the Harmony Gold Mining Corp., told MSNBC that officials have been in contact with the trapped miners, who are relatively calm and have access to food and water.