Race against clock to save China mine workers

Nearly 1,000 rescuers raced against the clock on Tuesday to free more than 150 workers trapped in a flooded half-built coal mine in north China, as officials warned gas was building up in the pit.

Two days after water gushed into the vast Wangjialing mine in Shanxi province, China's coal-producing heartland, officials admitted the fate of the 153 workers was "unclear".

And they warned that toxic gas was building up in the pit, posing a threat to both the men trapped inside and the rescuers trying to drain the floodwaters to save them.

If the construction workers are not rescued, the mine accident in Xiangning county will be the deadliest in China in over two years. In August 2007, 172 workers died after a flood in a mine in the eastern province of Shandong.

"Currently, more than 970 people are participating in the rescue operation," Liu Dezheng, vice-director with the Shanxi Work Safety Administration, told reporters late Monday, warning the emergency work could become more difficult.

"The coal mine has a high concentration of gas. Rescuers have to face the danger of toxic gas, while fighting the water," he said. "We must guard against secondary disasters."

Anger against mine officials

Some workers on Tuesday angrily accused mine officials of allowing them to keep toiling in the mine even after water began to leak in, days before the disaster.

"Water was seeping in on the 25th. It was reported to the management," a mine construction worker who gave only his surname, Shi, told AFP .

Beijing has ordered local authorities to go all-out to find the workers at the vast Wangjialing mine, which belongs to the state-owned Huajin Coking Coal Company and covers an area of 180 square kilometres (70 square miles).

More than 40 medical personnel and 20 ambulances were on standby at the site, in case emergency workers are able to pull some of those trapped - mainly migrant workers from other provinces - to the surface.

Investigations so far have shown that 261 workers were in the Wangjialing pit as water started to gush in - 108 were brought to safety, but the rest were still trapped underground.

One rescuer surnamed Wang, who spent more than half a day working in the pit on Monday to try to save those missing, told the official China Daily he had "no clue whatsoever" how much further down the workers were trapped.

The newspaper cited local workers as saying they believed even more men could be in the flooded pit.

"Those trapped are my workmates. I just want to try my best to save them," said one 40-year-old worker surnamed Xu, who told Xinhua news agency he had worked through the night to help position drainage equipment.

A preliminary probe showed water that had accumulated in nearby abandoned mines had gushed into the new pit.

Dim hopes of survivors

State media said the floodwaters were roughly the equivalent of that contained in about 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

"To survive down there around 1,000 metres underground would be very lucky," survivor Fan Leisheng told state television on Monday.

The colliery, presented as a first-class model of safety and efficiency on Huajin's website, was due to produce six million tonnes of coal a year.

Huajin itself is half-owned by China National Coal Group Corp, the second largest coal producer in the country and the parent of Hong Kong-listed firm China Coal Energy.

The flood was the latest in a series of accidents plaguing the world's top coal-producing nation, where mines are among the most dangerous globally. More than 2,600 people were killed in the country's collieries last year.

- AFP