Three days after water gushed into the vast Wangjialing mine being built in Shanxi province, nearly 1,000 rescuers racing to save the workers still had not detected any signs of life from the pit.

But Liu Dezheng, a spokesman for the rescue headquarters, said some of the miners might have survived as they were working on platforms at different levels, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

"It is believed that some workers may have a chance of survival. But we are not sure about the figure," Xinhua quoted him as saying.

As authorities criticised the mine owners for failing to heed warning signs of a possible flood, three managers responsible for the building of the facility went missing, state media said.

"The main problems the accident exposed were that construction work on the mine violated some regulations," the nation's work safety administration said on its website, adding there had been too many workers in the mine at once.

"When signs of water leaks appeared, workers were not evacuated in time and efficient measures were not taken... Since March, leaks were found several times but no efficient measures were taken to eliminate hidden dangers."

At the site in Xiangning county, rescuers continued to pump out the water equal to 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools that flooded the mine, where more than 100 policemen, some of them heavily armed, were deployed to keep order.

The water level in the shaft had dropped only 15 centimetres (six inches), according to Xinhua.

Workers watching the rescue efforts expressed bitterness as they recounted the management's apparent lack of concern for their colleagues' safety after they pushed staff to finish building the mine to meet an October deadline.

"They have been working us too hard. The regulations say we should be working eight hours a day but they have been working us 16 hours a day and won't let us come out," one worker surnamed Dao told AFP.

"These people have black hearts," he added, standing at the entrance of the mine shaft, where a slogan read: "Dare to be first, let's make a new record in building the mine."

Xinhua quoted Luo Lin, director of the State Work Safety Administration, saying an evacuation should have been ordered immediately after managers received reports of water leakage.

"The response should have been much faster," he said.

The official China Daily newspaper, citing sources within the mine's construction division, said three managers responsible for the building work had vanished in the wake of the accident.

If the workers are not rescued, the accident will be the deadliest in China's notoriously dangerous coal mines in more than two years. In August 2007, 172 workers died in a mine flood in the eastern province of Shandong.

Safety standards are often ignored in China's collieries in the quest for profits and the drive to meet surging demand for coal -- the source of about 70 percent of the country's energy.

The Wangjialing mine, which covers 180 square kilometres (70 square miles), belongs to the state-owned Huajin Coking Coal Company.

The colliery, presented as a model of safety and efficiency on Huajin's website, was due to produce six million tonnes of coal a year.

"The company will build a first-class, safe and efficient, large modern mine," the company said.

But for another worker, who would only give his name as Li, the claims were a sham.

"The management doesn't care about the miners, they only care about money," he said.

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News