China’s coal death knell rages on

IRJ – November 10 – A coal mine blast has claimed 20 lives and trapped 23 workers underground in China’s southwestern province of Yunnan, in the latest incident to plague the nation over a bad couple of months for mine fatalities.

China News Service (CNS) has confirmed the death toll at the Sizhuang Coal Mine, a privately operated project, and reports that those still underground face difficult rescue efforts because of a gas leak.

On November 4, a rock blast trapped 50 miners inside China’s Qianqiu coal mine in Sanmenxia, Henan Province, claiming at least four lives. The week previous, an accident in Hengyang city in central Hunan Province claimed 29 lives. On October 31, new publically disclosed figures (compiled by Bloomberg) revealed that for October 97 people died across the nation’s coal sector. In 2009, China suffered its most fatal coal mine accident ever when 100 people lost their lives in the north-eastern province of Heilongjiang, and in 2010 another 48 individuals died in a mine blast in central Henan province.

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