Society

Warnings ignored before mine disaster

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-01 07:17

XIANGNING, Shanxi - A failure to heed warnings that water was seeping into the coal shaft and a slow evacuation led to at least 153 miners being trapped in a mine in North China's Shanxi province, officials said on Wednesday.

Water is pumped out of the Wangjialing Coal Mine in Shanxi province on Wednesday. [Xinhua]

An evacuation should have been ordered immediately after managers received reports of water leakage, said Luo Lin, director of the State Administration of Work Safety.

Managers should have evacuated miners, cut power and suspended work at once, he said. "The response should have been much faster."

Workers building the Wangjialing Coal Mine had warned supervisors twice late on Sunday morning, about two hours before the flood occurred, said Jiang Shijie, a manager of the Wangjialing Coal Mine project.

Jiang received an emergency phone call at about 1:40 pm that water was pouring into the shaft. He tried to contact miners underground to raise the alert, but could not reach them.

Workers said that they had noticed water coming in even earlier - several days before the disaster occurred.

"We found water leaks on March 25 (Thursday) and reported it to management, but there was no response," said a worker who declined to be named.

Another worker surnamed Chen said he refused to enter the pit on Saturday after no dust came from his digging. "That was the sign the flood was coming."

Authorities said altogether 261 workers were in the pit of Wangjialing Coal Mine when underground water gushed in about 1:40 pm on Sunday.

A total of 108 were brought to the ground while another 153 were trapped, according to the rescue headquarters.

The floodwater had dropped, but there was still no communication with the trapped workers as of 1 pm on Wednesday, although about 1,000 rescuers have been racing the clock to pump out water and reach them.

Rescue headquarters also said it might drill holes from the ground to accelerate the pumping process.

The Supreme People's Procuratorate has said it would send its staff to supervise ongoing investigations, which are currently monitored by the provincial procuratorate.

An initial investigation showed that the project's management had failed in water detection and information release, resulting in workers breaking through to an adjacent abandoned shaft that was full of water, said a statement from State Administration of Work Safety.

The statement said as many as 14 teams were working underground at the time to accelerate the project, so a large number of workers were trapped.

A worker from Central China's Hubei province said the speed of work seemed to have been the only order from management and safety was barely mentioned.

The mine, affiliated to the State-owned Huajin Coking Coal Co Ltd, is a major project approved by the provincial government. It is expected to produce 6 million tons of coal annually once in operation.

Xinjiang mine collapse

In Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, 10 people have been trapped underground after a coal mine under construction collapsed on Tuesday.

Twenty-one workers were in the shaft when the accident happened about 10 am at the Shajihai Coal Mine in the autonomous county of Hoboksar and 11 were lifted safely to the ground, a county government spokesman said.

The local authorities have launched a rescue operation, he said, adding that the cause of the collapse is being investigated.

More than 110 people have been dispatched to rescue the trapped workers, but their efforts have been hampered by various difficulties, a spokesman with the Xinjiang coal mine work safety bureau said late on Tuesday.

"The collapse site is as deep as 700 meters underground, and the collapsed part is estimated to be 500 to 600 cubic meters. The geological structure underground is very loose. In addition, water has begun gushing into the shaft," he said.

"We have not established contact with the trapped workers so far," he added.

Xinhua - China Daily