A coalmine explosion killed at least six Wednesday night at Daji
Village, near Long'an City in east China’s Fujian Province.
Three workers escaped the blaze themselves without
injury.?Another, who was rescued, was seriously injured
and?is being treated in hospital.
One of the miners who escaped said that he smelled smoke inside
the mine at about 10:00 PM Wednesday and discovered that the air
compressor was on fire. Unable to switch it off, he ran outside to
try to cut the power.
He reported that there were 11 miners working inside when the
fire broke out.
Six of the miners’ bodies have been found so far.
Eleven of the rescue workers were overcome by carbon monoxide
when they attempted to save the miners, and were themselves pulled
out by their colleagues.
The privately owned mine employs 60 to 70 workers, all migrant
laborers from China’s inland areas.
Also this week, the Hunan Province?Work Safety Supervision
Administration announced Wednesday that 10 people were killed after
a cargo truck loaded with fireworks exploded in a fireworks plant
in Erhuping Village, Zhangjiajie City.
The tragedy occurred about 7:20 PM Tuesday when the loaded truck
was ready to leave the fireworks plant, a collectively owned unit
with 20 employees.
The explosion destroyed the factory and the truck immediately,
resulting in economic losses estimated at 200,000 yuan (more than
US$24,000).
Local police had closed down the fireworks plant on March 15 for
inadequate safety administration. Police are hunting for the legal
representative of the plant, Yang Taiji, who fled on hearing of the
incident.
The cause of the explosion is still under investigation.
On a brighter note, all 12 workers trapped since Sunday in a
flooded coalmine in Chaohua Town, Xinmin City, central China’s
Henan Province, were rescued Friday morning.
“All 12 miners are still alive,” said Yu Haiying, head of the
rescue headquarters.
They had been trapped since Sunday afternoon when a working face
of Zhengzhou Coal Industrial Corporation’s Chaohua mine was
suddenly flooded.
The coalmine did not carry out a thorough survey of the
hydrological and geological conditions in the mining area before
going into operation, according to the rescue headquarters formed
by the Henan Province Coalmine Safety Department.
Zhengzhou Coal said an investigation after the accident showed
that a nearby private coalmine had dug 320 meters inside the
boundary of the Chaohua mine, forming a mined-out area of more than
60,000 cubic meters.
The area held an estimated 28,000 cubic meters of accumulated
water, which suddenly poured down Sunday afternoon on the workers
in the Chaohua mine.
Henan safety authorities have called on all local coalmines to
conduct inspections for any danger of flooding and to prepare for
the upcoming rainy season.
(Sources: Xinhua News Agency, April 16, 2004)?