57 Believed Trapped in Flooded China Mine - Yahoo! News: "BEIJING - A senior Chinese official charged Monday that illegal operations by a northern China coal mine led to an accident that has trapped as many as 57 miners, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Monday.
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Rescuers rushed more pumping equipment to the Xinjing Coal Mine in Shanxi province on Sunday night and raised their estimates of the numbers trapped to 57, from 44, Xinhua said.
Confusion over the numbers was due in part to what officials said was a cover-up of Thursday's accident by mine managers, nine of whom have been detained, and to the mine's illegal practices.
Li Yizhong, director of the State Administration of Work Safety who went to the accident scene, said the miners were working in a coal seam beyond the mine's approved limits and the area flooded, Xinhua said. Moreover, Li said, the mine was producing above its approved capacity of 90,000 tons, having mined 130,000 tons between March 2 and May 18.
The flooding appeared to be among the most serious recent accidents in China's disaster-plagued mining industry, which suffers thousands of deaths annually. Despite repeated calls by Beijing for improved safety, the problem appears to be worsening as high economic growth keeps demand for coal strong and mine owners, often backed by local officials, try to maximize profits by overproducing.
On Sunday Xinhua said managers of the Xinjing mine failed to report the true size of the disaster, and reported only five miners were missing. To keep the extent of the accident hidden, managers drove relatives of missing miners by taxi out of Shanxi to the neighboring Inner Mongolia region 'to prevent them from rioting and speaking to the press,' Xinhua said.
'In this sense, the actual situation of the accident was covered"