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11 December, 2006
November, and to date December, have been two of the cruellest months in Chinese coal mines regarding tragedies and deaths. Disasters occurred in such frequency over the last weekend of November – 102 deaths in five separate coal mine mishaps – that the director of China’s State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS), Li Yizhong, lashed out at operators, provincial regulators and local authorities during a teleconference of safety officials on 28 November.
Li called the month of November “unprecedented” in terms of death and family loss in the country’s collieries. In a rare departure from the customary Chinese norm by top officials of reserve and calm, Li expressed outrage during his animated and angry teleconference. In some provinces, he told of corrupt practices in which closed mines are reopened, unlicensed mines are allowed to operate, and local and provincial officials, upon getting orders to shut a certain mine, intentionally close a smaller, less profitable one in the area in order that a higher producing mine stays open.
“How many lives do we have to lose before they learn from the lesson?” Li asked. “Don’t let unscrupulous mine owners kill more people in their final frenzy to make a profit.” In November, the accident rate was nearly 22% over that of October, with some 440 miners dying in a total of some 150 accidents. In Shanxi province alone, a methane gas explosion at an unlicensed mine which killed 24 on 25 November drove the death toll for the month in the province to over 100.
The rash of mine accidents of late stems from extremely high demand as the winter peak season approaches. Operators and mine regulators have ignored orders to close unsafe mines, and are flouting safety rules in order to meet current demand.
Over the final weekend of November, besides the gas blast at the unlicensed mine in Shanxi province, two other mine tragedies on 25 November killed a total of 56 miners, while the next day at the Linaying coal mine near Leding city, Jiangxi province, nine were killed and seven others injured in yet another explosion. The 25 November tragedies occurred at the privately-owned Chanyuan mine in Yunnan province where 32 miners perished, and at the Yuanhua mine in Heilongjiang province in which 26 died.
At the Chanyuan mine, local authorities had been under orders to close the two-year-old mine that contains over six million tonnes of coal reserves because of inadequate safety equipment, but had changed those orders and closed a smaller mine instead.
On 27 November, a coal supply tower collapsed at a mine in Guizhou province, killing four workers. And then a day after Li’s tirade, on 29 November, 11 died near Wuwei city, Gansu province, when the vice-director of an illegal mine opened a closed shaft for further production. He was one of the 11 killed from the sudden gas explosion.
December began with the same death wave inside China’s mines. On 1 December, the privately-owned and properly licensed Chengjin coal mine near Jixi city, Heilongjiang province, witnessed a gas blast that killed eight. Two days later, a roof collapsed at the Guanyin mine in Lianyaun city, Hunan province, killing 12. SAWS had revoked the safety license of the mine at the time of the accident. Interestingly, after the mine owner fled to avoid arrest, a relative of his stepped forward and sent 300,000 Yuan (US$38,000) to the local government to offset the cost of the rescue.
Last week, on 7 December, walls burst and flooding occurred at the Ping’an coal mine in Fuxin, Liaoning province. The tragedy killed eight, with the bodies of two missing miners only recovered yesterday. A day after the Liaoning flood, on 8 December, another flood, only this time at a gold mine in Shaanxi province, drowned six miners. That occurred when officials of Tongma Mining Co., which administers the mine, illegally set off underground explosives in order to open an abandoned mine shaft. The shaft had filled with water.
These human errors were similar to one exactly a month earlier, which began this latest death wave inside China’s mines. On 8 November, 13 miners died inside the Xinpo coal mine near Leiyang city, Hunan province, when a boss, seeking higher production, ordered electric drills into a shaft despite high readings of methane gas levels.