The death toll from China's latest mining disaster rose to 74 yesterday, as rescue workers searched for at least 32 other miners still missing and grieving relatives crowded around the colliery.
Nearly 24 hours had passed since a powerful gas explosion at the Liuguantun coal mine near Tangshan, Hebei Province on Wednesday afternoon, and some family members were becoming desperate because of the lack of information.
"My older brother is inside," said Li Hongqing, himself a coal miner, as he stood, red-eyed from a night of futile waiting, among hundreds of curious onlookers.
"I have no idea if he's dead or alive but I prefer to believe there's still hope," he said.
Police formed a cordon at the gate of the coal mine, strictly curbing access, while rescue teams worked frantically in sub-zero temperatures to locate the 32 missing.
Each time police stepped aside to make way for a departing vehicle, Li and other relatives experienced a brief glimmer of hope. Each time they were disappointed.
An elderly woman sobbed quietly while a teenage girl walked aimlessly around, not knowing if she would see her boyfriend alive again.
"He's only 19 but he's already worked in the mine for three years," said the girl, who gave her surname as Liu.
A nurse at the nearby Tanggang Hospital said about 20 injured miners had been brought in since the explosion. Some had suffered horrible burns, according to a witness who saw them at the hospital.
The explosion came at the end of a two-week period that has been brutal even by the Chinese mining industry's notoriously dangerous standards.
As rescue work was under way in Tangshan, survival hopes were fading for 42 other miners trapped for six days in a flooded mine in Henan Province.
And in one of the worst mining disasters in recent years, 171 workers were killed on Nov. 27 after an explosion occurred at the state-run Dongfeng coal mine in Heilongjiang Province.
Lax supervision has been blamed for many recent disasters and the Tangshan incident could prove no exception.
State-run Xinhua news agency quoted unnamed local authorities as saying the colliery's management was very poor and the official number of people registered as being in the mine at the time of the blast was not reliable.
"I'm sure someone must have screwed up somewhere," said an elderly man in the crowd outside the colliery.
The man, who worked in the city's mining industry for decades before retiring, said there had been several small accidents in the area but this one was the biggest by far in 50 years.
"Security is all right, but this is inherently dangerous work," Wang Ruicheng, a 36-year-old miner who narrowly avoided the explosion, said as he sat in his dormitory about 1km from the colliery.
"No matter how much security you've got, it will never be enough. You just have to be careful," he said.
Wang described himself as "very lucky" not to be among the victims, having been on the shift that ended just hours before the explosion.
Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed “Donald Trump” that is due to be sacrificed within days. Owner Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, said his brother named the 700kg bull over its flowing helmet of hair resembling the signature look of the US president. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo’s extraordinary hair,” he said at his farm in Narayanganj, just outside the capital, Dhaka. Mridha said that a constant stream of curious visitors — social media fans, onlookers and children — have come throughout
It began as a satirical online project. Now millions of young people in India are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration. A parody political party called the Cockroach Janta Party, with the insect as its symbol, has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humor into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach — known for its ability to survive harsh conditions — as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance. The online movement’s rise has been unusually rapid. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)
HOTTER: While Indians are accustomed to summer heat, climate change has caused northwestern India to warm faster than other parts of the country, an academic said Roads and markets have emptied during afternoons and some farmers have switched to nighttime work to avoid scorching temperatures as a heat wave grips large parts of India. The India Meteorological Department forecast maximum temperatures for yesterday of about 45°C in the capital, New Delhi, where authorities have opened temporary “cooling zones” to help people cope. The weather department warned that conditions would likely persist across several northern regions in the coming days, with temperatures staying well above seasonal averages. Authorities urged people to stay indoors during the hottest hours and take precautions against heat-related illnesses. India declares a heat wave whenever maximum temperatures
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
RSS