9 Killed, 5 Missing After Mine Floods In Northeastern China

[News_Editor]

9 killed, 5 missing after mine floods in northeastern China < br /> 2012-05-04 07:00:22 GMT+7 (ICT) HEGANG, CHINA (BNO NEWS) -- Rescue workers on Thursday afternoon recovered the bodies of nine workers after a coal mine flooded in northeastern China a day earlier, government officials said. Five other workers remain missing.The accident took place at around 7 a.m. local time on Wednesday when a shaft flooded at the Junyuan No. 2 coal mine in the city of Hegang, which is located in Heilongjiang Province. A total of 28 people were working at the mine at the time of the accident.A spokesman for the State Administration of Work Safety said ten people were able to free themselves on their own while emergency workers rescued another four miners. Nine bodies were also recovered as of Thursday, and five others remain trapped. "The rescue work is still being carried out," he said.The state-run Xinhua news agency reported that the mine was correctly licensed, but the investor and legal representative of the mine have been detained by authorities. The report did not say why they were detained. The deputy chief in charge of coal mine safety in Xing'an district has been sacked as a result of the incident. The cause of the incident is still being investigated.Safety conditions at mines in China have significantly improved in recent years but they remain among the world's most dangerous with at least 289 fatalities in the first quarter of this year. There were a total of 1,973 fatalities in 2011, 2,433 fatalities in 2010 and 2,631 in 2009, according to official figures.Last week, a powerful explosion ripped through the Xingya Coal Mine in Bayannur, a prefecture-level city in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region of northern China. More than two dozen people were working at the mine when the blast happened, killing nine of them and injuring sixteen others.And earlier in April, eleven workers were killed when floodwaters trapped a group of miners who were working at the Shanfu Coal Mine near the city of Changzhi in Xiangyuan County, which is located in Shanxi province. The owner of the mine initially claimed nine miners were trapped, but local authorities later discovered that eleven people were working at the mine which was operating with an expired production license.China in recent years shut down scores of small mines to improve safety and efficiency in the mining industry. The country has also ordered all mines to build emergency shelter systems by June 2013 which are to be equipped with machines to produce oxygen and air conditioning, protective walls and airtight doors to protect workers against toxic gases and other hazardous factors.The first manned test of such a permanent underground chamber was carried out in August 2011 when around 100 people - including managers, engineers, miners, medical staff, and the chamber's developers - took part in a 48-hour test at a mine owned by the China National Coal Group in the city of Shuozhou in northern China's Shanxi Province.One of the worst mining accidents in China in recent years happened in November 2009 when 104 workers were killed after several explosions at a coal mine in Heilongjiang province.

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