China's coal mines - getting less dangerous

For a long time China has had the unenviable record of running the world's most dangerous coal mines, but at least things are not as bad as they used to be. Last year the total number of miners killed fell below 1,000 for the first time. 931 is still a lot, but it is many fewer than the 7,000 recorded in 2002.

China produces about half of the worlds's coal, and the director of the State Administration of Work Safety acknowledged it still faces 'grave and complicated challenges in coal mine work safety.'  

Safety campaigns and better monitoring of methane gas have played their part in reducing the death toll, though perhaps the most important factor has been the closing of small mines which often had the worst records.

But there is concern that the number of casualties may be under-reported. Any accident that kills more than 30 miners automatically becomes the subject of a government inquiry. Last year, 14 managers and officials in Jilin province were gaoled for concealing the deaths of 8 miners so that the death toll in an accident in 2013 appeared to be 28 not 36.

See also my posts of Feb 22, March 10 and 19 Nov, 2009, and 16 Jan and 14 April, 2010.

Mining disasters

The death toll in the mining disaster at Soma in Western Turkey has now passed 300, and the energy minister has said there may be more bodies to be recovered. 485 miners are reported to have escaped or been rescued.

Police had to use tear gas and water cannon to disperse protesters complaining about safety standards and demanding that the government resign. Lawyers who came to advise victims’ families have been detained.

One survivor claimed inspectors never visited the lower reaches of the mine, but the government said it had been inspected ‘vigorously’ 11 times since 2009. A report in 2010 said the Turkish mining industry had the highest death rate in the world per million tons of coal extracted – 5 times the figure for China, and 360 times that for the United States.

The deadliest mining disaster in history happened on 26 April, 1942 at Honkeiko in the Manchuria region of China, while it was under Japanese occupation. 1,549 miners perished after an explosion, and the Japanese were heavily criticised for closing down the ventilation system and sealing the pithead, condemning many of the victims to death by suffocation.

*Review of the Romanian edition of A Disastrous History of the World. http://www.gds.ro/Util%20si%20Placut/2014-05-05/Cele+mai+mari+dezastre+din+istoria+omenirii 

Aberfan + 46

Some place names become synonymous with disaster – Krakatoa, Chernobyl, Flixborough, Aberfan.   It was there on this day 26 years ago that a mountain of waste from the local coal mine buried a school , killing 144 people including 116 children.

It was a foggy morning, and teachers and pupils had no warning of the impending disaster.   The first they knew was when they saw a wave of slurry higher than a house heading towards them, as one child put it, ‘as fast as a car’.    It uprooted trees before hitting the school ‘like a big wave’, crushing the buildings as well as houses nearby.

The tip had slid half a mile, burying teachers and pupils in their classrooms.  Local miners stopped work and joined with two thousand men and women hacking at the rubble with shovels, picks and bare hands to pull out whoever they could .

The slag heap had a stream running beneath it, and had also moved in 1959 and 1964, but warnings were not heeded, and an official inquiry declared the disaster ‘could and should have been prevented’.    For more details, see A Disastrous History of Britain.

Blood on the coal - Turkey

A reminder this morning of what a dangerous occupation coal-mining remains. Up to 32 miners are missing after an explosion in the state-run Karadon mine near Zonguldak on the Black Sea in Turkey.

Turkey’s safety standards are generally regarded as lagging behind those of most industrialised nations. In February a methane explosion killed 13 workers in another mine, while a further 19 miners died in an explosion in western Turkey last December. Turkey’s worst ever mining disaster happened in 1992 when 270 miners perished in another pit in the Zongalduk region.

Zongalduk was a small village until the 1850’s, but the exploitation of the rich coal seams in the Zonguldak mountains have turned it into the second biggest city on the Black Sea coast.

The world’s most dangerous coal mines are reckoned to be those in China, where thousands of miners are killed every year. (See also my blogs of Feb 22, March 10, Nov 19, 23, 2009 and Jan 16 and April 14, 2010.)

*For a review of my book Disaster! see Natural Hazards Observer P17 http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/o/archives/2010/may_observerweb.pdf. And for a review (in German) of my A Disastrous History of Britain see http://bauen-und-miauen.blogspot.com/

Another Chinese mining disaster

The death toll in China’s latest mining disaster has now reached at least 104. Another four men are still missing after Saturday’s huge gas explosion at the Xinxing mine in Hegang close to the Russian border.

Apparently, attempts were being made to evacuate around 500 miners from the pit when the gas ignited. About a dozen women who went to the mine early today to complain about the lack of information, clashed with police and security guards, and some were driven away in a van. Reporters who tried to speak to the women were harassed.

Despite an 18% reduction in fatal accidents in the first half of this year, China’s coal mines remain among the most dangerous in the world. In the first six months of 2009, 1,175 miners have already been killed. Another 11 died yesterday in an explosion at another mine in Hunan province.

China was the scene of the world’s worst mining accident at Honkeiko in 1942, when 1,549 miners were killed. See also my blogs of Feb 22 and Nov 19.

Chinese mining disasters

At least 73 miners have been killed, and dozens more are trapped underground after an explosion at the Tunlan colliery in China’s main coal-producing province of Shanxi. More than 100 injured miners have been taken to hospital.

China is the world’s biggest producer of coal, with perhaps 5 million people working in the industry, but it also has the worst accident rate. Last year, the official death toll in the industry was 3,200, but many believe the true figure is much higher. In 2007, a Hongkong-based human rights organisation said it could be as many as 20,000.

The worst mining disaster in history happened in the Honkeiko colliery in the Chinese region of Manchuria in 1942, while it was occupied by the Japanese. An explosion killed more than 1,500 miners, about a third of those working in the pit at the time.