Jaroslav Richter

"Those rescuers went through the whole district, they met the forty miners who had survived. They said they had the will and strength to reach the pit themselves, that they didn't need rescuers. Thirty-nine miners went out on their own, only one worker was left got mad. He was screaming down below. The rescuers had to take him out. The rescuers would occasionally put out a fire as they were going around the area, using a fire extinguisher. They counted the miners who died, turned off their lamps, and kept a record of where the miners were lying. But they did not save anyone else. Some miners survived the blast, but they didn't survive on because the blast sucked out the oxygen. Even though they put on self-preservation devices, which need at least 18% oxygen, they didn't survive moving through the fumes and all that. They died in there. And such a paradox: Kotěra Jiří, I think, survived in the second section. He was the father of a son, Jaroslav, I think his name was, who was in the fourth section. So the father went to the fourth section to save his son, to take him out. But he died there, also in that fourth section."

"So I went to see these guys and I see one had soiled himself, guys drained out of energy. It was getting close to the end of the shift, my mates looked terrible. They were exhausted, they didn't have the strength, it was awful hot and high concentration. It was a cross chamber and I said the big fan should be turned off because it was pulling the fire out. Even though I was a layman, I knew that. Because I'd already seen a huge fire in the ceiling. I said if the fan was turned off, it was close to the fan, it wouldn't burn like that. They didn´t listen to me. I was just an electrician. So the guys were doing the building, I was floating. Around a quarter to three, it wasn't finished the building or floating. The lifeguards came and took turns. They switched us. When there was a heavy operation like this, we helped these guys to transport the material, but because there was a shaft foot tennis tournament in Louka near Litvínov that day, that saved our lives, so we told them that we would not help them this time because we had a tournament. We shook hands and handed over the job. We got out, we had to write a report, sign shifts, so we were a bit delayed. At 3:30 we were still in our room, drinking coffee, and the others went to the tournament. We took a shower at 3:30, I think. We were having a lot of fun in the shower, saying we were going home. All of a sudden, the guys from Louka came running in plain clothes and shouting that the shaft had blown. We told Karel Kundrt to f... off, we thought he was joking. It was only when the water stopped flowing on our heads that we understood what had happened. I saved my life by switching my shift and by not staying there to help them."