Sheltering miners

Everything else aside, the rescue of 33 miners in Chile has at least accelerated the ripening of a national consensus in China on the imperative need for emergency shelters in our mines.

Yet such calls might seem redundant, as the State Council issued an order in July urging mining enterprises to introduce or complete safety guarantee infrastructures, including emergency shelters. However, only a few had taken it seriously before the rescue of the 33 Chilean miners.

As the country's chief work safety inspector phrased it: The compulsory installation of underground emergency shelters will "speed up".