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A survivor was swept away by a wave of mud and water after the wall of a mine collapsed on Thursday, killing at least 200 people.
By Saw Nang and Richard C. Paddock
MANDALAY, Myanmar — An ominous rumbling was the only warning the young jade miner had that something was wrong.
Within seconds he was running, but before he could take even a few steps he was swept away by a huge wave of mud and water. Tumbling underwater, he managed to reach the surface, swimming for half an hour before finding land.
“I think he was going to die,” said the miner, Ko Aung Kyaw Htay, 23, on Friday, a day after the Wai Khar mine crisis in northern Myanmar, which killed two hundred others. “I still can’t escape. I have no idea what happened to the other people running around me. I think they’re all dead.
Mr. Aung Kyaw Htay, one of many unauthorized jade collectors searching the edges of the Wai Khar open pit mine in Kachin state, Myanmar’s lucrative jade industry hub, where rebels and government forces fight when the crisis struck. The heavy rains of the annual monsoon had filled the giant mine with water, creating a lake. Just after dawn on Thursday, a mine wall collapsed, crashing into the lake and generating a wave more than 20 feet high.
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