Hopes for the survival of 181 workers trapped in two separate flooded coal mines in east China faded yesterday as search operations continued.

Five pumps were used to expel water from the Huayuan mine, about 150 kilometers south of Jinan, the provincial capital of Shandong, and Minggong mine, 10 kilometers from the Huayuan colliery.

The water level in the Huayuan mine continued to drop after a 50-meter-long levee breach of the Wenhe River was blocked early on Sunday by more than 2,000 troops, police and volunteers. The breach led to the flooding of the two mines.

By last night, the water level in the Huayuan mine, where four pumps were operating to extract 660 cubic meters of water per hour, had fallen by 21.5 meters in 26 hours.

However, the Huayuan mine is estimated to be filled with 12 million cubic meters of water. The depth of water in the shaft is 71.1 meters.

All the water pumped from the shaft will be treated to prevent pollution in rivers and lakes around the mine, according to rescuers.

Two pumps each drawing 1,000 cubic meters per hour will soon be operational at the Huayuan mine, said Bu Changsen, a flood-prevention expert with the rescue headquarters.

More pumps are being transported to the Huayuan mine, which will bring the total number to 10.

Four well drills called in from the Shengli oil field in the east of the province are in place at the mine and one has started drilling.

The drilling of wells from the ground to the flooded shaft will help speed up the pumping progress, said Bu.

The flooding happened last Friday, first at the Huayuan Mining Co Ltd in Xintai City, and later at the Minggong mine.

When the flooding struck about 2:30pm, 756 miners were working underground at the Huayuan mine and 584 managed to escape.

Ninety-five miners were working inside Minggong facility when the flooding occurred about 8:45pm on Friday. Eighty-six escaped.

One pump is operational at the Minggong mine filled with an estimated 145,000 cubic meters of water, drawing out about 140 cubic meters per hour.

Human error looms large for relatives

Human error played a bigger role than chance in the levee breach that left 172 miners trapped underground, relatives of the men said.

A retired worker in his 60s told China Daily yesterday that the levee had been a problem for several years. He said it first flooded in 1989. Other people said the mine had flooded every year since 2002.

"Water was at calf level the first time the mine flooded. The managers must have thought it would be the same this time around," said Chen, 33, whose elder brother is among the trapped.

A miner who works for Huayuan Mining Co, but who declined to be identified, said the mine had experienced a similar accident last year, but on a smaller scale.

"Only a few died," he added.

Huayuan also reportedly received six phone calls from the Xintai administration of work safety on Friday, before the accident, but took no action.

The administration is said to have issued a notice to all local coalmines, urging them to stop production and evacuate miners during torrential rainstorms.

Huayuan's vice-general manager Zhang Canjun rejected the allegation, saying it was "absolutely impossible", without further elaboration.

But Chang Luo (not his real name), a worker at a nearby mine, said he was evacuated at around noon on Friday, while his brother, Huayuan miner Chang Chenqi (not real name), continued working and is still stuck somewhere underground.

In addition to refusing to take the work safety agency's orders, Huayuan is also being criticized for sending workers underground knowing that the mine could flood.

"The workers from the day shift, most of whom managed to escape later, reported the rising water levels and submerged work areas to the management, but the company did nothing," said a man surnamed Cao.

His brother-in-law is trapped in the mine.

Liu, a resident of Xidu village, which is near the site of the accident, said that miners were not the only people hurt by the levee break.

"An old guard from a brick factory at our village was the first to arrive at the scene. He fell and was immediately submerged," he said.

The relatives of the miners said that what angered them most was that Huayuan's management apparently did not try hard enough to rescue their loved ones.

"We saw with our own eyes that at around 3 pm on Friday, a group of Huayuan managers, including deputy mine operator Huangfu Tingping, were on site directing rescuers to close the breach with small agricultural vehicles," Chen said.

They said the miners all had cell phones with them, and the managers could have tried to warn them about the flood, as rescuers in Henan Province did earlier this month.

"This wasted the best chance to save our brothers," said 37-year-old Zhao, whose younger brother is trapped inside the mine.

"If the PLA and the armed police were there at that time, (the miners) would definitely be out by now."

(Xinhua News Agency, China Daily August 21, 2007)