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Families of 153 trapped Chinese miners fight for hope

30 March 2010 19:57 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Over 1,000 rescuers fought against the clock at a Chinese coal mine where 153 workers were trapped by flooding in what could be one of the worst disasters to hit the deadly industry in recent years, APA reports quoting â€œThe Washington Postâ€ newspaper.
China has the world’s deadliest coal-mining industry, with more than 2,600 people killed in mine floods, explosions, collapses and other accidents in 2009 alone.
Anxious families at the Wangjialing mine in northern Shanxi province struggled to keep up hope as high water levels stymied pumping efforts.
"I have been here for two or three days and I haven’t seen them taking any action, only a little water was pumped out today," Xiao Shihong, a mother of four whose husband and two brothers-in-law are all trapped in the mine, said on Tuesday.
"Now it is the third day, but we still don’t know anything."
Some 108 men were lifted to safety on Sunday when water surged into the pit that was under construction.
It is likely the construction workers inadvertently broke through into a disused pit that was full of water, Chinese media said. The Beijing News said on Tuesday that workers complained of leaks and pooled water in the mine before Sunday’s flood.
Most of the 261 workers believed to have been underground at the time of the accident were migrants, some from as far away as southern Hunan and Guizhou provinces, with no better employment options than the wages offered by the risky mining industry.
Compared with other manual jobs, Chinese coal miners can earn relatively high wages, but the danger from floods, explosions, gas and cave-ins is ever-present.
On Tuesday, rescuers pulled two men from a flooded iron ore mine in Henan Province, where they had been trapped for eight days. Three people died in that accident and six others are still missing underground.
Miners’ widows face a bleak future with no prospect for income, said Wang Wen, a mother of two waiting in her husband’s dormitory at the Wangjialing mine.
"There will be big problems. We do not even know where to go to beg for food. I have two parents, and they are in their 80s," she said.
The Wangjialing mine, near the heavily polluted city of Linfen, is owned by state-owned Huajin Coking Coal Co. Ltd., itself owned by China National Coal Group and Shanxi Coking Coal Group, two of China’s larger state-owned firms.
The mine is a major government-approved project and is expected to produce about 6 million tonnes of coal a year when it comes on line.
The majority of Chinese mining accidents have occurred in small operations and a campaign in recent years to close thousands of such pits has helped cut the annual death toll.
But demand for coal to fuel the country’s strong economic growth means some reopen illegally or flout official rules, and there have also been some accidents at larger outfits.
A gas blast at a coal pit in northeastern China in November killed at least 104 miners, while 74 died in an explosion in February at another mine in Shanxi, a coal-rich area.