Society

Pump helps race to reach miners

By  Qiu Bo and Yang Jun (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-05-31 05:14

GUIYANG - A third pump has been brought in to boost rescue efforts as emergency crews battle to reach 12 miners trapped in a flooded coal mine in the capital of Guizhou province, said an official.

A rescuer walks out of the coal mine on Monday where flooding trapped 12 miners on Sunday in Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province. Ou Dongqu / Xinhua

The local government is doing all it can to reach the miners, he added.

The men were trapped after an accident at 9 am on Sunday. Forty-six of the 58 miners underground at the time managed to escape from the flooding but the other 12 remain unaccounted for, the local official confirmed.

The new pump started working at 7 am on Monday. By noon the water level in the mine had fallen 30 centimeters compared to the level 12 hours before. However, the progress was slower than it was immediately after the incident, when the water was lowered by 1.5 meters, said Yang Yaqi, deputy director of the city's work safety bureau.

Yang told China Daily the final meter of water that must be pumped out before the stuck miners can be reached is proving to be harder work than first expected because of the complicated structure of the mine.

Zhang Zhiping, an official from the bureau, said rescuers had also started work on a new tunnel to reach the trapped miners.

He said about 20 meters of the new tunnel had been drilled by noon on Monday.

"But there is still about 40 meters remaining before we will reach the place where the survivors might have gathered," Zhang said, adding that it is hard to predict how long it may take to bore through the remaining distance.

Yang Yaqi said that the tunnel team detected gas at 2 pm, which held up drilling work.

Zhang added that a ventilator had been set up in the shaft to pump fresh air in to the survivors.

"The oxygen in the enclosed space where survivors are trapped should be sufficient," Yang Xiaoping, head of the work safety bureau said on Sunday. He confirmed rescuers had heard sounds likely made by someone striking rocks from the direction of the survivors on Sunday.

Zhang said the rescuers had broken up into three rotating shifts to make sure the work continues around the clock.

"There are some 60 to 70 rescuers working in each shift," he said.

Wang Jichang, a 41-year-old local miner, said he arrived at the coal mine at 4 pm on Sunday and immediately joined the rescue effort. He got some sleep on Monday morning and prepared for the next shift.

According to local officials, 11 of the trapped miners are from Guizhou province while the other is from Yunnan province.

Liu Tongyi, a gas inspector who was in the mine when the flooding began, told China Central Television that the situation deteriorated very quickly.

"The water was huge and moved very fast," Liu said. "Coal and gravel flowed with the water. I was almost overwhelmed."

Liu said he grabbed a steel frame and climbed up, and finally escaped from the mine.

An investigation has found that the owner of the mine should be held responsible for the accident, the local authorities said.

There has been a spate of coal mine accidents in Guizhou in recent years. The most recent one happened in March when eight miners died because of a gas leak in Panxian county.

The provincial government initiated a restructuring plan for the industry earlier this year, aimed at consolidating the mining sector and reducing the 1,660 local coal mines into fewer than 200 in three years. The change will allow for tighter supervision.

However, an unnamed insider told Xinhua News Agency last month that some small coal mines that may have to close under the plan will likely speed up production before the reorganization, which could cause additional safety risks for those working underground.

The Guiyang government announced on Monday it will investigate all mines in the city's jurisdiction and close those with safety risks. It also plans to eventually close all mines in the city.