Province has risen to 166 as more missing miners were declared dead, state media reported.
Officials said rescue efforts were being blocked by
fires and thick toxic fumes in the state-owned
Chenjiashan Coalmine in Tungchuan City.
A total of 293 workers were working underground when the accident happened on 28 November. Some 127 miners escaped. The Chenjiashan mine employs 3,400 workers and produced 2.3 million tonnes of coal last year. Another gas explosion there in 2001 killed 38 people.
The explosion is the most serious such accident in the last five years, as a gas explosion in Daping Coalmine in Henan Province killed 148 miners in October this year and 162 miners were killed in an explosion at Muchonggou Coalmine in Guizhou Province in September 2000.
The huge number of deaths in the Chenjiashan mine
accident and the frequent occurences of other major
mining accidents in the last two months once again
proves the danger of working in Chinese coalmines,
which are the world's deadliest.
A deceased miner's older brother told
China Labour Bulletin that he had tried to seek help
from the Chenjiashan mine's trade union, but trade
union staff there refused to offer any help. He said
his brother, Li Zisheng, had told him that he knew there was fire
inside the mine before he went in to work there. "I had
advised him not to go down to work in the mine, but he
said he was afraid that his wages would then be
cut. But now, he has gone and will never
return." Li, who had two sons, had to work about 15
hours every day without even a single day off all month and he only earned a meager salary of 800 to 1000 Yuan a month, the brother added.
An official work safety expert, Zhou Qingyun, was quoted by Xinhua News Agency as saying that the carbon monoxide density at the Chenjiashan Mine was so high that even one breath would have been fatal.
During a press conference this morning, Shaanxi Coal
Industry Bureau chief Huo Shichang said there was no
chance for the trapped miners to survive in "an
environment with high temperatures and toxic gas."
According to government statistics, 4,153 people were
killed in coal mine accidents in the first nine months
of this year. The government said China accounted for 80
percent of all coal mine accidents in the world in
2003.
In a separate accident, 13 miners were killed and
three missing in an explosion early this morning in a
coalmine in Guizhou Province.
Sources: Xinhua News Agency, China Labour Bulletin,
Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Reuters
1 December 2004