China mine blast kills 74, mocking safety drives

TANGSHAN, China (Reuters) – A gas explosion at a Chinese
coal pit has killed at least 74 miners, state media said on
Thursday, the latest in a grimly predictable series of
statistics to emerge from the world’s deadliest mining
industry.

Thirty-two were still missing in freezing temperatures at
the Liuguantun colliery in Tangshan, 180 km (108 miles) east of
Beijing in Hebei province, after Wednesday’s blast.

Xinhua news agency said initially that 186 miners had been
working in the pit at the time but later revised the figure to
106. The State Administration of Work Safety put the number in
the pit at 123.

Police struggled to hold back hundreds of relatives
crowding around the mine’s entrance hoping for information. But
with high gas levels inside the shaft, rescue efforts were
going slowly.

Families of the dead would each be compensated 200,000
yuan, state television said.

China has been struggling to clean up its mining industry,
which killed 2,700 people in the first half of 2005 alone, but
a string of accidents in recent weeks has made a mockery of
safety campaigns.

An explosion in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang
in late November killed 171 miners.

Flooding at another Hebei mine days earlier trapped 18
underground. Three managers fled the scene, leaving rescuers
with no guide to the underground warren.

Last week, 42 miners were trapped by flooding at a mine in
the central province of Henan. Three mine officials fled that
accident, but were later caught by police. The mine had been
operating without a safety permit.

The China Daily newspaper said that it was unlikely any of
the trapped men had survived.

The Liuguantun mine was originally a state-owned mine run
by the local government with an annual production capacity of
300,000 tonnes. In 2002 it went into private ownership and its
production capacity was halved, Xinhua said.

The Work Safety Administration said Liuguantun was
classified as a low-gas mine, but Xinhua said investigators had
confirmed a gas explosion as the cause of the accident.

The government has been trying to close small mines to
consolidate the industry, demanded officials sever financial
links with mines and called for managers to head underground
with miners on each shift to check safety standards.

But booming demand and high coal prices mean regulations
are often ignored, production is pushed beyond safe limits and
closed mines reopen illegally.