Flooding traps 180 coal miners in eastern China

BEIJING (Reuters) - More than 180 coal miners were trapped underground in eastern China on Saturday after heavy rain caused a river to burst through a levee and inundate two separate shafts, the latest blow to the world's deadliest mining industry.

The official Xinhua news agency said 584 miners escaped after Friday's incident at the state-run Huayuan Mining Corp. mine in Shandong province, but attempts to reach another 172 were hampered by continued flooding as soldiers raced to repair the river levee.

Nine other miners were trapped in the Minggong mine nearby, after 86 others there escaped, Xinhua said.

There was only a slim chance the trapped miners could survive, Wang Ziqi, director of the Shandong coal mine safety administration, told Xinhua.

"Nobody came up today, so everyone is waiting," a resident contacted by telephone told Reuters. "It doesn't look good."

The scene of weary emergency workers and anxious relatives echoed another rescue effort under way in the United States, which has a much cleaner safety record but where three people have died trying to save six miners trapped in a Utah coal mine.

Mining is risky worldwide, but China's coal industry is deadlier than any other country's, with about 2,163 coal miners killed in 1,320 accidents in the first seven months of the year.

Even in a country where mining accidents happen nearly daily, the scale of this latest accident stood out.

More than 200 millimeters (8 inches) of rain had fallen in Xintai, about 570 km (350 miles) southeast of Beijing, since Thursday, causing a 50-metre (160-foot) breach of a levee of the Wen river.

Water filled much of the 860-metre (2,800 feet) deep pit at the Huayuan mine, quickly overwhelming the mine's pumps. It was not known at what level most of the miners were trapped, but 14 were 30 meters (100 feet) underground, according to Xinhua.

ECONOMIC PRESSURE

By midday, about 2,000 Chinese People's Liberation Army troops, armed police and miners had closed a 20-metre section of the breached levee, Xinhua said.

"It's still raining here, so there's still the risk of floods ... It's very tense. We just have to do what we can," a mine manager said by telephone. "The weather has been really unusual. Shandong is usually very dry. Conditions have been abnormal."

Central government officials asked neighboring Hubei and Hunan provinces to rush five large water pumps to Xintai. Other mines in the area were told to suspend operations.

Most of the trapped miners were from rural areas in Tai'an City and surrounding areas, Wang Junmin, vice governor of Shandong, told Xinhua.

"The miners are all local men," said Wang Wei, a man who sells mining equipment. "Everybody here is very worried because we all know the mine and the miners ... It hadn't had problems before, none that I'd heard of anyway."

China Net, an online state news service, said the Huayuan mine, with annual production capacity of more than 750,000 tonnes, was operating legally.

Heavy demand for coal to feed rapid economic growth in the world's fourth-largest economy has led some mine operators to push production beyond safe limits, despite Beijing's efforts to crack down on corruption and lax enforcement of standards.

Last year, 4,746 people were killed in thousands of blasts, floods and other mining accidents. While this year's record had been improving, the level is far worse than in other major coal-producing nations.

The U.S. Department of Labor, for instance, had recorded 14 coal mine deaths as of August 10 this year. Chinese officials estimate that China now suffers 1.485 mine deaths for every million tonnes of coal produced, compared with about 0.04 U.S. deaths for every million tonnes that country produced in 2005.