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27 August, 2007
China's second worst coal mine disaster in modern history came on 17 August 2007, when 181 miners were trapped and died inside two mines in the Shandong Province. The tragedy was the result of both flash flooding and negligence by privately-owned Huayuan Mining Co. when a levee broke on the nearby Wenhe River.
Two smaller mines in the same area were evacuated due to heavy rains near the town of Xintai, in this eastern Chinese province. But Huayuan company officials kept mining operations going in crowded mine shafts, some 860 metres below the surface. A total of 584 miners managed to escape the flash flooding, after a 50-metre wide gap in the levee gave way adjacent to the mine.
It is believed this mine disaster only trails a February 2005 gas explosion at the Sunjiawan coal mine in Liaoning Province, killing 214 miners, as China's worst mining tragedy.
In the days following the Huayuan coal mine disaster, at least three other mining accidents in China claimed the lives of another 22 miners.
On 23 August, a water break at a coal mine in Panzhihua city, in the south-western province of Sichuan, drowned eight miners. A gas explosion on 24 August at the Xinglong Mine in Chongqing claimed the lives of seven miners, while 18 others escaped.
And on 25 August, another gas blast killed seven. That occurred at the Liyuan coal mine in Huolin city, Inner Mongolia. The Liyuan mine was undergoing reconstruction and should not have been producing coal.
China's State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) Director Li Yizhong has targeted closure of another 1,000 small mines by the end of the year, bringing up to 10,000 the number of such mines officially closed. These mines are defined as producing less than 30,000 tonnes per year, and are generally considered as unsafe or operating illegally.
In contrast, the Huayuan mine in Shandong Province, which was state-owned until 2004, produces between 600,000 and 700,000 tonnes of coal per annum.