An ignorance of lives

With each tick of the clock, hope gets thinner for the lives of the 153 workers trapped hundreds of meters underground in the flooded pit of Wangjialing coalmine.

As we pray for signs of life after "at least" three days - the time apparently needed to pump the water out - a sad truth makes our blood boil: The warning that could, and should, have lifted everybody out of harm's way was ignored, three long hours before the devastation.

And here is the official explanation for the intolerable dereliction of duty: There had been so many false alarms of leaking from the pits that the last warning sounded like someone crying wolf.