Reuters: Northeast China Coal Mine Blast Kills 44

Tue Jul 9, 5:59 AM ET

BEIJING (Reuters) - A gas explosion at a coal mine in northeastern China killed 44 miners in the latest in a string of fatal accidents in the world's deadliest mining industry.

The official Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday 44 people were in the unlicensed Dingsheng mine in Heilongjiang province at the time of the blast, including mine head Zou Tianyu, and all were killed.

Monday's accident took the number of miners killed in China in the last month to more than 240 and occurred as a top national safety official vowed to crack down on owners of unsafe and illegal mines.

Zhao Tiechui, deputy director of the State Administration of Work Safety Supervision, was quoted on Monday as blaming shoddy safety practices for the latest spate of accidents.

"Enterprises turning a deaf ear to safety regulations and management processes are the main reason for the recent disasters," he said.

"The evil supporting organizations behind those unqualified mines should be dismantled in line with the law," he said.

Xinhua also said seven miners died on Sunday when a coal mine flooded in Jilin province, neighboring Heilongjiang.

Police and mining officials in Hegang, where the Dingsheng mine is located some 1,500 km (930 miles) northeast of Beijing, could not be reached for comment.

But Xinhua said a power outage shut off the ventilation system, which led to a gas buildup. The gas exploded when the power supply was restored, it said.

The blast came less than a month after an explosion ripped through another Heilongjiang coal pit, killing 115 miners.

SOARING NUMBERS OF VICTIMS

China's mining industry claimed more than 7,000 lives last year, about 5,500 of which were in coal mines, according to official statistics.

Michael Komesaroff, head of Australia-based consultancy Urandaline Investments, which consults on China's power, metallurgical and mining industries, said the number of deaths was probably much higher.

"For the last couple of years they've officially lost about 5,000 people a year, but unofficially the number's probably twice that because they're only required to report accidents when there's more than three people who've lost their life," he said.

On June 29, the National People's Congress, or parliament, passed China's first work safety codes aimed at curtailing work-related disasters, including mining mishaps, the English-language China Daily newspaper reported on Tuesday.

But past efforts to regulate mines -- many of which are tiny and illegal -- have proved less than successful.

Thousands have been ordered closed, but many have reopened under the protection of local governments which rely on them for tax revenues.

"It's like most things in China where you've decentralized power down to the provincial level and the provinces can't afford to do without it. It's a source of employment for them and it's a source of income," Komesaroff said.

Xinhua said Dingsheng mine's operator Zou ignored orders from the local and provincial mining authorities on July 5 and July 6 to stop operations until he obtained a license to run the mine.

TOLL RISING

China has blamed explosions on poor ventilation in mines that skirt hard-to-enforce safety regulations.

Coal mining is particularly dangerous because the pits tend to be gaseous and small mine operators seldom have the needed safety equipment and procedures to test the mines, Komesaroff said.

In the past two weeks alone, more than 80 miners have been killed or are missing and feared dead after a flood and three explosions.

On Sunday, a blast at a coal mine in the southern province of Guangdong, which neighbors Hong Kong, killed four people and left six missing, Xinhua's Web site said.

The news agency quoted rescue workers in the province of Jilin, just south of Heilongjiang, as saying they had been digging round the clock to find 37 miners trapped last Thursday after an explosion.

Two bodies had been recovered from that blast but chances were slim any of the 37 others would be found alive, it said.

And in Shanxi province, about 300 km (190 miles) west of Beijing, a gold mine explosion killed 37 people in late June.