Rescuers ordered to enter Chinese mine

The governor of the Chinese province where 153 miners have been trapped in a flooded coal mine for almost a week has ordered rescuers to enter the mine by noon local time Saturday, an official said.

Rescuers heard signs of life Friday from the Wangjialing mine in the northern province of Shanxi. Footage on state-run China Central Television showed them tapping on pipes with a wrench, then cheering and jumping after hearing a response. They lowered pens and paper, along with glucose and milk, down metal pipes to the spot where the tapping was heard.

But nothing new had been heard as of Saturday morning, said Wen Changjin, an official with the news centre set up at the site.

"At the request of the governor, as of noon, rescuers should go down the shaft, but we're not sure if they will be able to do so by then," he said.

It was not immediately clear what risks rescuers would be taking by entering the Wangjialing mine, where 3,000 rescuers were working nonstop to pump out water. Wen said the water level underground had dropped by more than five metres as of early Saturday morning.

Government officials say the flood was triggered when workers digging tunnels broke through into an old shaft filled with water.

Earlier, relatives had complained the work was proceeding too slowly.

Miners trapped on 9 platforms

The 153 workers were believed to be trapped on nine different platforms in the mine, which was flooded with up to 140,000 cubic metres of water, the equivalent of more than 55 Olympic swimming pools, state television has reported.

Rescuers said four of the platforms were not totally submerged, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported Friday evening.

"It is believed that some workers may have a chance of survival," a spokesman for the rescue headquarters, Liu Dezheng, told state media Wednesday. "We will go all out to save them."

David Creedy, a former mine consultant who now works in China as coal mine methane director for Sindicatum Carbon Capital, said if the mine's tunnels remain open with no cave-ins, rescuers should be able to reach the miners by pumping out the water or sending a diver through.

He said the survival of those trapped depends on several factors, including how cold and wet they are and how much air is available.

"Certainly for the current time, a week or so, there's a good chance," he said.

Another mine safety expert said the quality of the air below ground was a concern.

Water may be too polluted to drink

"It's not only the oxygen but whether the air has poisonous gases and whether the miners can drink the water or if it's polluted, since it came from an abandoned mine," added David Feickert, who advises the Chinese government.

A preliminary investigation found that the Wangjialing mine's managers caused overcrowding in the shaft by assigning extra tunnelling crews in a rush to finish the work, and ignored warning signs, the State Administration of Work Safety said.

"Water leaks were found numerous times on underground shafts," but the mine's managers "did not take the actions necessary to evacuate people," it said.

It could prove to be the deadliest mine accident in China since a coal mine flood in eastern Shandong province in August 2007 killed 172 miners.

China's coal mines are the world's deadliest, despite a multiyear government effort to reduce fatalities. Most accidents are blamed on failure to follow safety rules or lack of required ventilation, fire controls and equipment.

Accidents killed 2,631 coal miners in China last year, down from 6,995 deaths in 2002, the most dangerous year on record, according to the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety.

2 other deadly mine accidents

Also Friday, officials said the death toll from an explosion at another mine in central China had risen to 19 people, with 24 still trapped underground.

A gas leak caused Wednesday night's blast, according to a report on the website for Luoyang city in the central province of Henan.

In a third accident, a coal mine fire in the northwestern province of Shaanxi killed nine people Thursday evening, Xinhua said. Another 17 miners escaped. Xinhua did not say what caused the accident.