A coal mine cave-in in central China has killed four workers and trapped at least 50 others.
State media reported that Thursday night’s disaster in Sanmenxia, in the province of Henan, followed a magnitude-2.9 earthquake in the area. Reports say rescuers have pulled out seven injured miners, and another 14 have managed to escape.
The Associated Press, citing a Chinese account, said at least 200 workers are digging a small rescue tunnel about 1,650 feet deep to try to reach the trapped miners. Their condition is unknown.
In China’s tragedy-plagued mining industry, it was the second deadly disaster in a matter of days. On Saturday an explosion at a mine in Hunan, in southern China, killed 29 workers.
As the British newspaper The Guardian reports, China has reduced the number of deaths in mines from a peak of almost 7,000 in 2002 to 2,433 last year, amid a campaign to close illegal mines and merge smaller ones with state enterprises. But miners in China remain much more likely to die on the job than their counterparts in the developed world.
A spokesman for the advocacy group China Labour Bulletin, Geoff Crothall, said the country’s mines remain poorly managed and more worker involvement is needed to promote safety. Workers, he said, “are not listened to at all. The attitude of mine bosses is: if you don’t go down we will get someone else.”
STUART SILVERSTEIN
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