Society

Relatives hold hope of survival in flooded mine

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-04-02 01:35
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XIANGNING, Shanxi - Li Peng cannot help weeping as he thinks of his 53-year-old father, who has been trapped underground in a flooded coal mine for more than four days.

"Everyone in our family has tried to persuade not to work in coal mines, it is too dangerous. But he would not listen," the 24-year-old says while anxiously watching the rescuers from a hillside with other relatives.

His father, Li Ruzhen, who has been coal miner for more than two decades and the backbone of his needy family, is among 153 people trapped underground after the Wangjialing Coal Mine, in north China's Shanxi province, was flooded Sunday afternoon.

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"I felt the sky had fallen when my mother called me and told me about it on Monday. My mother has been crying and she cannot even open her eyes now," says Li, a university graduate who just started working in Beijing.

His family belongs to the poorer section of society in Taiyuan, the Shanxi provincial capital.

About 3,000 rescuers are racing the clock to pump water and reach the trapped miners.

Rescuers have said the trapped miners were working in nine different platforms when the flood happened, and some of the platforms were above the water level, making it possible that some workers could have survived.
But no sign of life has been found so far.

The water level underground had dropped by 95 cm and a total of 44,200 cubic meters of water had been pumped from the shaft by 6 pm Thursday, said Liu Dezheng, a spokesman of the rescue headquarters and deputy director of the General Office with the Shanxi Provincial Work Safety Committee, at a news conference late Thursday.

Altogether 13 pumps were pumping up to 1,485 cubic meters of water per hour, he said.

Rescuers were installing more pumps to raise the capacity to 2,000 cubic meters per hour, he said.

"Complicated geological conditions and too much floodwater underground have made the pumping difficult. In addition, rescuers have been very tired after working for more than 100 hours," he said.

That was why the number of rescuers and technical experts had increased, he said.

Those trapped are from 14 provinces, mostly from Shanxi and the central Henan province. So far, 587 of their relatives from 133 families have arrived at the site, and the relatives of the remaining 20 are en route to the coal mine.

Hu Xinqin, a 36-year-old woman from Henan, has been weeping since Sunday night when she arrived at the coal mine, even though she was told her husband might be alive because he was working at a place higher than the water level.

"I have been standing here to watch the draining, except to go to my husband's work shed for rest," she says.

Cheng Xiuying, who came from the eastern Anhui province, held out hope her brother-in-law, Zhang Deqin, was still alive.

"He has elderly parents and two children to support. Without him, I do not know how my younger sister will live. My only hope is that rescuers can pump even faster and pump more," she says.

It is also the hope of rescuers.

"We can take a break if we are tired. We can have something to eat if we are hungry, but what can the trapped brothers do? Like their relatives, we are also very worried when we think of them," says a rescuer surnamed Liu from Henan. "What we can do is work faster."

A total of 261 workers were in the pit of Wangjialing Coal Mine, which was under construction, when underground water gushed in at about 1:40 pm Sunday. Altogether 108 were lifted safely to the ground.

The mine, which straddles Xiangning county, of Linfen city, and Hejin city, of Yuncheng city, covers about 180 square kilometers.

The mining zone was estimated to have more than 2.3 billion tons of coal reserves, including 1.04 billion tons of proven reserves, according to the company's official website.

The mine, affiliated with the State-owned Huajin Coking Coal Co Ltd, is a major project approved by the provincial government. It is expected to produce 6 million tons of coal annually once in operation.

If the trapped workers are not saved, the accident will be the deadliest in the country's coal mines in more than two years. In August 2007, a total of 181 workers died at two flooded coal mines -- 172 at one mine -- in Xintai, eastern Shandong province.

"We came here for hope. We hope they pump faster. We hope my father and other trapped people can come out alive," Li Peng says.

"Even if my father has died, I hope his body can be pulled out. I do not want his body to be soaked in water for all time."