Beijing – An explosion tore through a coal mine in northern China on Wednesday, leaving at least 62 workers dead and 13 others missing, the government said, the third disaster in recent weeks involving scores of miners.
The latest incident highlights the Chinese government’s continuing battle with mine safety despite repeated crackdowns and pledges by the leadership to improve conditions.
Last year, more than 6,000 miners were killed in fires, floods, cave-ins and explosions, making China’s shafts the world’s deadliest. Corruption, lax safety rules and poor equipment are among factors often blamed for the accidents.
Wednesday’s explosion occurred at the privately run Liuguantun Colliery in Tangshan, a city in Hebei province, when 186 miners were underground, said an official with the Tangshan Coal Mine and Safety Bureau who would only give his surname, Zhang.
Zhang said 82 miners escaped on their own and 32 were immediately rescued, but three of those later died. The bodies of 59 other miners had been recovered by early today, and rescuers were searching for 13 people still trapped in the mine.
The official Xinhua News Agency previously put the number of workers underground at 123.
The government has shut down thousands of unsafe mines and punished mine owners who put profits ahead of lives. But China’s enormous need for energy, stemming from its booming economy, has complicated the issue.
Mine accidents are reported on a near-daily basis, some involving huge death tolls. The worst in recent years occurred in February in northeastern Liaoning province, when an explosion killed 214 miners.
On Tuesday, rescuers recovered the body of the last miner missing in a Nov. 27 blast in Heilongjiang province, also in the northeast, bringing the number of fatalities in that mishap to 171.
The explosion at the Dongfeng Coal Mine was sparked when airborne coal dust caught fire, according to state media.
Officials tried unsuccessfully for days to get an accurate count of how many miners were underground when the blast occurred, underscoring the mismanagement and inattention to safety protocols that plague the industry.
The accident prompted Premier Wen Jiabao to declare over the weekend that the industry was “chaotic and without safety enforcement in place,” according to Li Yizhong, the director of China’s State Administration of Work Safety.
