Rescue workers carry a miner who was trapped in a gold mine after a landslide in San Juan Arriba, Choluteca in southern Honduras, Friday July 4, 2014.MEXICO CITY – Three miners were rescued Friday after spending more than two days trapped following a collapse at a small, wildcat gold mine in southern Honduras. Eight others remain missing.
Moises Alvarado, the head of the country’s emergency commission, said the rescued miners are in “relatively good health, though they are exhausted and showing signs of severe dehydration.” One of the three suffered severe contusions.
Alvarado identified the rescued miners as Byron Maradiaga, Bryan Escalante, 20, and Nehemias Mendez, 28.
A crowd of about 300 residents, volunteers and fellow miners cheered as the rescue workers brought the three miners out one by one in a rescue basket from the mouth of the mine.
Emergency personnel and fellow miners had spent hours supplying water and food to the three miners after hearing their shouts and tunneling small holes into the area where they were trapped.