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Mine owner who stalled flood rescue under probe

By Wang Jingqiong (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-06-20 10:24

The owner of a private coal mine in southwestern Guizhou province is being investigated after allegedly trying to cover up an incident in which 16 miners were trapped underground by floodwater.

By press time, the miners were still unaccounted for.

The flood is thought to have happened around 4 pm on Wednesday at the Xinqiao coal mine, which is 95 km from the county seat of Qinglong in Qianxinan autonomous prefecture.

The local government is understood to have received its first distress call from the mine owner at 3:30 am Thursday, some 13 hours after the incident took place.

Because the mine is in a remote mountainous area, it took an additional five hours for rescue crews to reach the mine, said Xie Jinghong, deputy director of Qinglong county government office.

Lu Wanli, the mine's owner, reportedly said he did not want to make the incident public because he believed the miners could be rescued by colleagues.

"I thought I could do it," he reportedly said.

Yet, Lu's mine is a private one with an inadequate rescue team and a lack of rescue equipment, meaning the local rescue effort and delay calling for help wasted critical time, said officials.

"At first, he refused to give us the name list and the exact number of the trapped workers after we arrived, and then he just tore the paper off the list. It took us about eight or nine hours to persuade him to give us the names," Wang Hongyu, vice-mayor of the prefecture told reporters.

Tang Xiangqian, vice-mayor of the prefecture, said he did not doubt Lu delayed reporting the incident and hid facts that caused a hold-up in the rescue effort.

Local police are supervising Lu and the investigation will continue after the rescue effort is concluded.

"The priority now is to save people, and everything else, including investigating the cause and deciding whether to accuse Lu of a crime, has to wait. If it turns out that all 16 died, it is possible he will be held accountable both for the accident and its delayed reporting," a source from Guizhou bureau of coal mine safety told China Daily.

Chen Min, mayor of the prefecture, added: "Now, our most determined attitude is to save people. What we are thinking is how to draw the water out. So long as we can draw the water out, there is still a possibility of saving our people."

Thirty workers went into the coal mine into the shaft, according to the local coal mine safety bureau.

Around 300 rescuers, including firefighters and local people, are on the scene.

The rescue strategy calls for draining paths under the site, pumping water out with high-powered equipment and accessing the location from other, disused shafts.

Ma Lian, general engineer of Guizhou coal mine safety bureau, explained the challenge.

"This, originally, was a small 30,000-ton mine, and the owner was trying to change it into a 150,000-ton one. Yet with not enough investment, the facility is very poor. With the small well entrance and narrow path, it is very difficult to accommodate a high-powered pump," he said.

Two of the trapped miners are believed to be locals, while the others are mostly from Hebei and Anhui provinces.

In another development, six people were killed and two injured after a gas blast ripped through the privately-run Tianwan Coal Mine in Guiding County of Qiannan Buyi and Miao autonomous prefecture in Guizhou on Friday, when eight miners were working underground.