With each tick of the clock, hope gets thinner for the lives of the 153 workers trapped hundreds of meters underground in the flooded pit of Wangjialing coalmine.

As we pray for signs of life after "at least" three days - the time apparently needed to pump the water out - a sad truth makes our blood boil: The warning that could, and should, have lifted everybody out of harm's way was ignored, three long hours before the devastation.

And here is the official explanation for the intolerable dereliction of duty: There had been so many false alarms of leaking from the pits that the last warning sounded like someone crying wolf.

The way this fatal mistake was ignored is unacceptable because it smells of a horrible indifference to lives. It reminds us of a previous report about a local meeting on production safety. Many local safety supervisors either came late, left early, or simply did not show up. The head of the Yuncheng bureau of coal industry, to which the Wangjialing mine was consigned, happened to be one of the absentees.

The more worrisome truth, however, is that Wangjialing is not the only place where the dignity of lives appeared worthless to some local officials. One day before the tragedy, in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, a 92-year-old man and his 68-year-old son set themselves on fire in a desperate attempt to stop government-dispatched demolishers from bringing down their pig farm. They failed. The son died, the father was fatally burnt and the demolition never stopped.

The local government sounded perfectly poised as they continued the forced demolition for fear of "secondary disasters." They seemed resolved to show that life as a bargaining chip carries no weight in their eyes, or at least less important than allowing officials to lose face. Now they should be stopped.