Guangdong: saving 102 miners trapped in flooded mine is practically impossible
Meizhou (AsiaNews/Agencies) There is practically no hope left of saving 102 miners trapped in a flooded coal mine in Xingning in Guangdong's Meizhou county. The water level has now reached 60 metres at the entrance of the mine and chances of bringing the miners out alive are minimal, because they are more than 400 metres away from the entrance. The flooding started at 1pm on Sunday 7 August and only four miners managed to escape while one was rescued. One of those who made it said: "We heard a very loud bang around a week before the incident. Some of us thought there was a cave-in. We let the local authorities know and they sent inspectors but everything happened before the cause could be determined." A former manager of the mine said that some years ago, digging was carried out exclusively above an underground river there. Recently, however, digging had also started around the water flows to go deeper.
Only 20 out of 102 miners hail from the place, the rest are immigrants from Jiangxi and Hunan. They earn 50 yuan a little more than five euros per day. Relatives of the miners rushed to the site of the incident, where they are increasingly despairing of finding their dear ones alive. Many are mothers with children, whose only source of income is their husband. Others are extremely poor peasants, who are parents or brothers of the victims.
Local authorities have closed all the mines of the county but it is proving impossible to find the owner of Daxing mine, where the disaster took place. Mining has long been the main source of income for the area. Meizhou county supplies coal to industrial plants in Shenzhen. The closure of the mines has led to an increase in prices of fossil coal from 320 to 350 yuan (36 Euros) per ton.
Such incidents are a frequent occurrence in China's coal mines: last night (local time) 14 miners were killed in a gas explosion in a mine in Guizhou. Another 23 managed to escape.
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