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5 April, 2010
After seven-and-a-half to eight days trapped deep inside a coal mine, Chinese rescue teams freed some 120 workers today, 5 April, from a massive state-owned colliery still under construction. The Wangjialing mine in northern Shanxi Province was flooded by 140,000 cubic metres of water on 28 March when workmen, one kilometre underground, inadvertently broke through a wall into an adjacent and abandoned shaft filled with water.
There were hopes that some of the remaining 30 of 153 workers trapped might also be alive. “It is a miracle. This has been worth all (our rescue) efforts, not to have slept for several days,” said one medical worker today to the news agency China Nouvelle.
Chinese authorities began sending divers and other rescuers into the mine on Saturday, 3 April, after drilling and laying pipes were done to pump water out. Workers were stranded for over a week in some nine different mine shafts. Some 100 rescue workers descended into the mine late last evening, 4 April, and returned in the early hours of today with the first nine survivors.
By mid-afternoon in Shanxi Province, or 06h00 GMT, another 111 construction workers had been pulled from pits.
The State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) last week blamed lax safety and a haste to finish construction on the 180-square-kilometre mine as cause, but ineffective mapping of either waterlogged old shafts or an underground river no doubt also contributed.
Workers reported persistent water leaks in the days leading up to the flood and brought that to the attention of construction supervisors. But the warnings went unheeded. Workers had also seen their eight-hour workdays increase to 16 in efforts to finish mine construction so mechanical digging could begin. Reportedly, several construction managers fled the area immediately after the flooding began, and they are now wanted by Chinese authorities.
SAWS stated on its website: “This incident once again exposes lapses in responsibility and management of safety and failure to take safety checks and measures seriously.”
The eight-day ordeal, which saw some 3,000 recovery and medical personnel present, got wide attention both inside China and worldwide. Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang appeared at the site on the third day of rescue operations (30 March) and later in the week sided with angry relatives of workers who demanded local officials release a list of those missing.
Huajin Coking Coal Ltd., jointly owned by the China National Coal Group and the Shanxi Coking Coal Co. Ltd., was started in 2006 as a US$287.5 million project, with an expected production of six million tonnes annually. The mine is estimated to have 2.3 billion tonnes of coal reserves, including 1.04 billion tonnes of proven reserves.
Construction started on the Wangjialing project near the city of Hejin in Xiangning County in April 2007 and was originally scheduled to be completed by March 2010.
But delays pushed that deadline back to October 2010, and it is now certain that the rush to finish later this year jeopardized construction safety.
The Wangjialing mine tragedy will inevitably result in some deaths, but it was not the only China coal mine last week that experienced death. In nearby Henan province on 31 March, 19 miners were killed and 24 are still missing after a methane gas explosion inside an illegal Guomin Mining colliery near Luoyang City, Yichuan County. The mine had been ordered closed by provincial safety authorities on 1 May 2009, after huge gas outbursts were reported. Managers of the privately-owned company had gone missing following the explosion.
And a day earlier, on 30 March, ten workers became trapped and died at the Shajihai Coal Mine in the far western autonomous region of Xinjiang Uighur when a shaft collapsed.
On 1 April, nine miners perished from a fire inside the Quanzigou Coal Mine near Hancheng City, Shaanxi Province. In the northeastern province of Heilongjiang on 1 April, a flood inside shafts trapped five miners and they are presumed dead. And carbon monoxide from self-made explosives claimed four lives in the autonomous region of Guangxi Zhuang in southeastern China.