Rescuers still working to save trapped miners

Rescuers still working to save trapped miners
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-04-04 22:07
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XIANGNING, Shanxi - More than 30 rescuers are planning to enter a flooded north China mine where 153 miners have been trapped for a week.
The headquarters planned to launch the rescue operation Sunday noon, but no decisions had been made as of 9 p.m. Beijing time.
The headquarters officials were revising the rescue plan due the complicated situation underground in Wangjialing Coal Mine in Shanxi Province.
Once the water dropped to an appropriate level, the operation would be launched, said Liu Dezheng, the headquarters spokesman, also an official with Shanxi Provincial Work Safety Administration.
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The mine, which straddles Xiangning County, of Linfen City, and Hejin, a county-level city within Yuncheng City, covers about 180 square kilometers.
The water level had dropped by 10.2 meters as of Sunday noon. More than 2,500 cubic meters were being pumped out each hour. The water need to drop by another two meters, rescuers said.
An investigating team that entered the flooded mine Saturday and early Sunday said the situation was very complicated and the gas intensity was fluctuating.
There seemed to be more water in the shaft than expected, indicating there was less room for the trapped to evade the flood, Liu said.
The concave ground in the mine would also gather water so that rescuers would be blocked on the way to sites where miners might have survived, he said.
The area around the shaft gate was cleared of debris and the rescue team was awaiting instructions.
A total of 153 ambulances were on standby, including 73 parked at the shaft entrance. Five hospitals closest to the site and another four in Taiyuan, the provincial capital, have been prepared to receive survivors.
More than360bags of glucose, each 200 ml, have been sent down the 250-meter coal mine after hearing banging on the metal pipe Friday, but no further signs of life have been detected since then.
About 3,000 people have been working around the clock to pump out water since underground water gushed into the pit of under-construction Wangjialing Coal Mine at about 1:40 p.m. last Sunday.
Altogether 261 miners were working underground, and 108 were lifted safely to the surface.
Rescuers said the flooding took place when workers digging tunnels broke through into an old shaft filled with water.
The mine, affiliated to the state-owned Huajin Coking Coal Co. Ltd., is a major project approved by the provincial government. It is expected to produce 6 million tonnes of coal annually once in operation.
If the trapped workers cannot be saved, the accident will be China's worst mining disaster in more than two years. In August 2007, a total of 181 workers died at two flooded coal mines -- 172 at one mine -- in Xintai, eastern Shandong Province.