Five dead bodies have been recovered from the flooded coal mine in the northeast, but twenty-five miners remained trapped underground and ten rescue workers poisoned by carbon monoxide yesterday
"The rescuers are in a stable condition after medical treatment," said Sun Hongzhi, director of Jilin Provincial Coal Administration.
The Tengda Coal Mine in Jiaohe City was flooded on Sunday when water from the neighboring Ji'an mine gushed into the shaft, trapping 69 miners.
Thirty-nine were rescued the next day, but workers were forced to stop operations at 12:30 AM on Tuesday after some lost contact with the rescue center and ten were affected by carbon monoxide.
All the rescuers were lifted out of the tunnel.
"The priority now is to restore the ventilation system," said rescue expert Duan Genghua.
According to latest reports, rescuers were still waiting for the poisonous gas to be discharged, and there was no information on the remaining 25 trapped miners.
As events were unfolding, Vice-Premier Huang Ju told a two-day conference on mine safety that dealing with the issue of coal mine safety was important.
"Ensuring safe production in coal mines is a top priority," he said at the event in Huainan City in east China's Anhui Province.
Generally, he said, the situation in collieries has improved, with a year-on-year drop in the total number of pit accidents and deaths. However, due to the strained coal supply, fragile management and inadequate supervision, big blasts occurred from time to time.
(China Daily, Xinhua News Agency April 27, 2005)
