Fears for 181 miners trapped by floods in China

Floodwaters caused by heavy rains poured into two coal mines in a town in eastern China, leaving 181 miners trapped and feared dead, government officials said today.

There was no word on whether there was any sign of life in the mines or when rescuers might enter them, but two high-speed water pumps were reportedly being rushed to the flooded shafts.

A dyke on the Wen river in Shandong province broke at about 2.30pm (7.30am Irish time) yesterday, sending water gushing into a mine run by the Huayuan Mining Company in the city of Xintai and trapping 172 miners, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Work areas were submerged and the miners “had only slim chances of survival,” Xinhua reported, citing Wang Ziqi, director of Shandong’s coal mine safety agency.

A total of 756 miners were working at the time of the disaster and 584 escaped, the report said.

Five hours later, nine more miners were trapped when floodwaters poured into Xintai’s Minggong coal mine, Xinhua and China National Radio reported.

A mine employee said the water came from a small river nearby, not the Wen dyke break.

Storms that swept through the region yesterday and today dumped over 9ins of rain, Xinhua said.

Some 2,000 soldiers, police and miners were working today to close the 50-metre-wide gap in the Wen dyke, the agency reported.

The water was over 6ft deep at the breech, the report said.

The directors of China’s industrial safety and coal mine safety agencies rushed to Xintai from Beijing to oversee rescue work, Xinhua said.

The disasters came as rescuers in the US state of Utah suspended the search for six coal miners trapped since August 6 by a cave-in. Authorities announced the suspension following a tunnel collapse that killed three rescue workers.

China’s coal mines are the world’s deadliest, with thousands of fatalities a year in fires, floods and other disasters. Many are blamed on managers who disregard safety rules, fail to install required fire-control equipment or push miners to dig far more coal than the mine’s license allows.

The government has promised for years to improve mine safety.

Authorities offer rewards to whistle-blowers who expose problems, prosecute officials who collude with unscrupulous mine bosses, and have ordered thousands of small pits closed.

But China depends on coal for most of its electric power, and the country’s economic boom has created voracious demand. Production has more than doubled since 2000.

China’s deadliest reported coal mine disaster since the 1949 communist revolution was an explosion that killed 214 miners on February 14, 2005, in the Sunjiawan mine in Liaoning province.