THIRTY miners trapped underground were still missing in a flooded coal mine in Jiaohe, a city in Northeast China's Jilin Province on April 27. Rescue workers were forced to suspend their search on the noon of April 26 after 10 rescuers were poisoned by carbon monoxide.

A report from the China News Service said that another rescue team was sent to the shaft to look for the trapped miners around 8 pm on April 26. Thirty-nine miners were rescued alive from the flooded coal mine on the previous day and were brought to a local hospital for medical treatment.

The miners were working beneath the shaft of Tengda Coal Mine, a licensed township-run coal production business, when the flooding occurred around 7 am on April 24. Water continued to gush into the shaft for three hours, according to Bu Hongliang, a production chief who was rescued.

Sources with the rescue centre confirmed that the water came from the Ji'an mine, which is located several hundred metres away from the flooded Tengda Coal Mine. "Rescue staff were working hard to plug up the water source while draining water away," said a Xinhua story on April 25. The cause of the accident is still under investigation.

On the same weekend in Central China's Henan Province, another mining accident left eight miners dead and four missing after a machine caught fire in the coal mine shaft, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

The colliery was supposed to be undergoing maintenance when the fire broke out early in the evening of April 23, when no one should have been working underground, said the local police. But when the blaze began, 79 miners were underground, 67 of whom managed to escape.

China's mining industry is plagued by explosions, floods and other underground disasters, which killed 1,113 people in the first three months of the year, up 20.8 per cent over the same period last year, according to the State Administration of Work Safety.

The government has pledged some 3 billion yuan (US$362.5 million) to improve safety but has found it hard to curb the problem in the face of strong demand for coal, which accounts for around two-thirds of the country's energy consumption.

Amid the growing number of mine accidents, Vice-Premier Huang Ju has called for improved safety measures in coal mines.

Acknowledging the importance, urgency and arduousness of enhancing work safety in the mining industry, Huang said at a two-day working conference in Huainan City, East China's Anhui Province, that "ensuring coal mine safety is the top priority of the country."

Overall, Huang noted, work safety in China's coal mines has been improving with the total number of mining accidents reduced and the death toll in coal mines cut year by year. However, due to the strong demand for coal, many coal mines operate under overload, which is made worse by poor management and a lack of supervision.

(Star News)