Wednesday, May 14, 2003
63 killed in China coal mine blast
Agence France-Presse Beijing, May 14
Sixty-three workers died and 23 others are missing and feared dead after a gas explosion ripped through a coal mine in eastern China, officials said on Wednesday.
"Sixty-three miners have been confirmed dead and their dead bodies have been found," a mine official surnamed Zhang told AFP from the scene of the blast in Anhui province. He said there were 23 still missing from the accident, which happened 590 meters (1,947 feet) deep in the mine shaft, and that rescue work was ongoing.
"The chances of their survival are not very good," Zhang said. "So far 17 rescue workers have been sent into the mine. They have been divided into two groups and they are trying to find those still missing. "It was a gas explosion. Twenty-seven people have been rescued and 10 are in hospital."
The blast struck the registered Luling coal mine in Anhui province's Huaibei city shortly after 4:00 pm (0800 GMT) on Tuesday.
Rescue workers were feverishly trying to find those trapped in the mine shaft, said family members and friends of employees who were helping. "They haven't been home for two days," said a man in his 20s, whose father and uncles work in the mine, but were not in the same shaft at the time of the accident.
The man and other residents reached by phone Wednesday said the mine, located near Suzhou city, was the largest in the Huaibei Coal Mine Administration.
It employs 7,000 workers, an official in the company-run union said. The young man, who declined to give his name, said his family members had worked in the mine for years, beginning when it was built some 35 years ago. Few major accidents have happened in the state-run mine.
"It's a safe mine, but mines always have some accidents happening," said a friend of a mine office employee. She said that while accidents were few and far between they had happened in the past and a few people had died. Many family members of the miners were at the scene, waiting at the gate of the mine hoping their relatives would be found alive, said another employee's friend.
Chinese mines, many illegally operated, have an appalling safety record with thousands of deaths reported last year in explosions, floods and cave-ins. China's market-oriented reform of the state-run coal sector is leading to increased mine accidents while the ruling Communist Party-controlled unions are ineffective in safeguarding workers, labor activists have said. Last month, two major explosions killed 97 miners in China, with 72 dying at the Mengnanzhuang mine in Shanxi province in the north and 25 in a blast at the Mengjiagou mine in the northeastern province of Liaoning. Official figures show nearly 1,600 miners died in Chinese mines in the first two months of the year.
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