RISING WATERS and a potentially lethal build-up of gas were hampering efforts to rescue the remaining 32 miners trapped in the Wangjialing coal mine in north China a day after the miraculous discovery of 115 survivors.
The previous day’s jubilation was dimmed by the discovery of six bodies in the mine in Shanxi province, which flooded on March 28th when workers who were digging a tunnel broke into an old shaft filled with more than 130,000 cubic metres of water.
Rescuers said highly toxic and combustible gas was seeping into the mine on Day 10 of the rescue mission, and also that many tunnels were too narrow for pumps to gain access. One of the pumps used weighed 14 tons.
The trapped workers were in three different locations in the mining shafts that were inaccessible because of the flooding, China Central Television reported.
A rescue team leader, Chen Yongsheng, told a news conference that two or three of the underground mine platforms had not yet been checked for survivors. The rescuers were working to stop any explosions and to keep the mine well ventilated.
A preliminary investigation last week found that the mine’s managers ignored water leaks before the accident, the State Administration of Work Safety told Xinhua.
The survivors told how they ate scraps of paper, sawdust and even coal to stay alive in the shaft. They drank the flood water, and some used their belts to attach themselves to the wall of the mine so they could sleep without slipping below the water.
Sixty of the rescued workers were taken yesterday to hospitals in the nearest big city, Taiyuan. They were carried aboard a specially chartered train so they could receive better medical care.
The miners are being kept away from reporters. Yesterday they had their first full meal in 10 days – many of them are suffering from dehydration. They also have skin infections from being in the water for so long.
“I want to have meat. Sausage would be better,” one miner was overheard saying by the Xinhua news agency. He was holding a bowl of noodles.
Accidents killed 2,631 coal miners in China last year, down from 6,995 deaths in 2002, when the government set out to clean up the industry’s appalling safety record.
Coal accounts for 69 per cent of the primary energy in China – 42 per cent higher than the world average, and the country’s miners often end up as victims of the rush to provide the coal needed to fuel its factories.