40 Dead in Coal Mine Blast, China Says

A gas explosion buried 44 miners in a coal mine for two days, leaving 40 dead and three missing in northern China, the official Legal Daily reported Saturday.

The blast, the latest this year for China’s deadly mining industry, occurred April 15, trapping the 44 miners in the Yongcai coal mine in northern Shanxi province, 360 miles southwest of Beijing, the newspaper said.

Rescuers found only one survivor, reaching him Monday. They recovered 40 bodies and, as of Friday, were still searching for the three missing miners, the paper said.

Chinese authorities are investigating the cause of the accident, the Legal Daily said.

The newspaper said the explosion caused more casualties than any other accident in the coal mining industry this year.

China’s coal mines have a poor safety record, and thousands of miners die in accidents each year. Few regulations, lax enforcement and thousands of small, unlicensed operators have contributed to frequent accidents.

In the first nine months of 1999, 3,464 coal miners died in accidents. In 1998, the death toll from underground explosions and mine collapses was 2,028.

In the first three weeks of this year, mining accidents claimed more than 70 lives.

One of those accidents killed at least 14 miners in January in Jiangsu. Chinese emergency workers succeeded in rescuing several of the miners trapped for six days deep underground in a collapsed shaft, state media and local officials said.

In the Jiangsu incident, rescue workers managed to provide the trapped miners with oxygen and a nutritional liquid.