Qualla: Qixia Gold Mine Accident

Qixia Gold Mine Accident: Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On the seventh day, a note came up on a rope. Rescuers had drilled a narrow borehole through 240 meters of rock and lowered flashlights, water, medicine, pens, and paper into the darkness below the Hushan gold mine in Qixia, Shandong Province. Within an hour, the supplies at the bottom of the rope had been taken and a handwritten message attached in their place. Miners were alive at 648 meters underground, and they had been waiting since January 10, 2021, when an explosion collapsed the access tunnel and cut off every route to the surface.

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Qixia Gold Mine Accident: Thirty Hours of Silence

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The explosion at 2 p.m. on January 10 severely damaged cages, ladders, and communication systems within the mine shafts, trapping twenty-two miners working at 648 meters and below. What happened next compounded the disaster. The mine's operating company, judging the rescue too di...

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Qixia Gold Mine Accident: Drilling Through Darkness

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The rescue mobilized 11 teams, 393 workers, and 70 pieces of mining and drilling equipment. The challenge was brutal: solid rock, active utility lines, and a mine deep enough that conventional access routes were completely blocked. Rescuers worked on multiple boreholes simultaneo...

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Qixia Gold Mine Accident: Eleven Out, Ten Gone

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By January 24, two weeks after the explosion, eleven miners had been brought to the surface one at a time in a cuffa -- a large metallic bucket used in mine shafts to transport personnel and equipment. Each extraction was painstaking, threading a human being through a narrow shaf...

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