Rescuers were trying to free 28 people trapped in a flooded coal mine in southwest China yesterday, in the latest incident to hit the country’s notoriously dangerous mining sector.
The accident at the mine in Sichuan province occurred at 11 a.m. near the city of Neijiang, Xinhua reported, citing local authorities.
A total of 41 miners were working in the Batian coal mine when the flood hit, but 13 escaped, the report said.
Rescuers had begun pumping flood water from the pit, but the whereabouts of the trapped miners were not immediately known, Xinhua said.
“We have sent four trucks of pumping equipment from (the provincial capital) Chengdu to help the rescue work,” Lin Shucheng, the province’s top safety official was quoted as saying.
Mr Lin said the mine had recently been renovated to increase its annual output to 60,000 tonnes from the previous 50,000 tonnes.
“But all its operation was legal,” he said. “Its business licence and production permits are valid.”
Provincial and local safety officials were not available for comment when contacted yesterday night.
Earlier Xinhua also reported three workers were trapped by flood in an iron ore mine in southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Saturday night. Rescue workers were still trying to free them yesterday.
But China’s strictly controlled media gave few details of either incident. The media instead focused on the rescue of a 43-year-old identified only by his surname Fan, who was saved after being trapped for more than three days in a one-metre- diameter steel pipe off China’s east coast.
Fan was working at the bottom of the pipe – part of an offshore rig –- near the coast of eastern Zhejiang province when tidal pressure twisted the pipe “like a beverage can” and it sank 18 metres below the sea, Xinhua said.
The upper part of the pipe was squeezed to three centimetres (1.2 inches) wide at its narrowest part, the report said. While trapped for 80 hours Fan received food and water through a tube and a psychiatrist counselled him.
Footage on China Central Television showed workers cutting Fan out with a blowtorch after removing a cement column from the seabed so they could raise the section of pipe out of the sea.
He was shown being lifted onto a stretcher and being rushed to hospital, but reports said he suffered no serious injuries.
In China, considered one of the world’s most dangerous places to work, an average of 187 people were killed in work-related accidents every day in the first half of this year, according to government figures.