Moscow ? Relatives greeted eight miners rescued Saturday from a burning Siberian gold mine, as workers searched through smoked-filled tunnels hoping to find nine others still trapped hundreds of yards underground.

As the survivors were rushed to a hospital to be treated for hypothermia and carbon dioxide poisoning, they described their two-day ordeal, saying they managed to stay alive by sticking together. Sixteen others died in the raging fire.

“Nobody panicked, nobody quarreled,” a shaken Yevgeny Slivka told state-run Channel One as he lay in a hospital bed, his face covered with soot.

“We shared one cigarette among the eight of us, we had two pieces of lard that we split into small equal pieces among all, we spread the bread evenly, too. Nobody yelled at each other … everybody managed to stay together.”