XINMI, China, (AFP) - The death toll from a devastating coal mine disaster in China rose to 62 as hopes of finding any survivors amongst a further 86 missing workers faded.
Nearly 450 workers were packed into the Daping mine in China's Henan province late Wednesday when miners at the upper levels detected a spike in gas levels and started to evacuate the mine in Wuzhuang village near Xinmi city.
Some 300 miners escaped but around 150 were feared dead after a series of explosions ripped through the mine, according to reports on the website of the State Administration of Work Safety and accounts by local residents.
The accident is yet another blow to China's beleaguered coal mining industry. China is the biggest consumer and producer of coal but appalling safety standards contribute to thousands of mining deaths each year.
Grieving relatives outside the mine said workers had complained of safety standards at the coalface.
"When it comes to producing more coal and making more money, safety conditions almost always become secondary concerns," said a retired miner surnamed Li, awaiting news of his trapped nephew outside the gates of the mine.
"There was a lot of talk in the mine that the mine boss was no good. A lot of the miners did not like him."
Li, who worked in a neighboring mine near Xinmi city for over 20 years, said in recent years mines have gone into overdrive to feed China's growing hunger for cheap energy.
"In all my 20 years working, I have never seen a disaster as big as this," he told AFP, while asking that his full name not be used.
With an economy that is growing by more than nine percent a year and depends on coal for 70 percent of its energy, China needs all the coal it can get.
Production was pushed last year to 1.7 billion tonnes, up 21.5 percent from the previous year.
Coal is also the cheapest source of energy in China due to its abundance.
The Daping mine blast, where miners work 10-hour shifts extracting coal from the shafts 24-hours a day, was indicative of the pressures on miners to meet the huge demand for coal.
Top provincial officials rushed to the Daping mine on Thursday and ordered an all out effort to search for survivors and identify the dead.
Most of the miners were believed to be young farm workers who were hired from outlying regions, so notification of families of the victims was expected to take days.
Over 1,000 people have been thrown into rescue operations, including taking care of victims' families.
Late Thursday, wives and mothers of the dead were seen outside the mine weeping and sobbing, while the menfolk stood by stoically awaiting news.
"I used to work in that mine," Wu Quanyou, whose older brother was in the mine, told AFP. "But I didn't like the conditions in there so I quit."
Official figures indicate over 7,000 workers die each year in China's coal mines, but Hong Kong-based human rights group China Labor Bulletin puts the annual number of deaths in the industry at around 20,000.
Large numbers of fatalities go unreported, as mine managers seek to avoid heavy penalties and debilitating mine shut downs ordered by the government after accidents occur, the group says.
The Daping mine, which is run by the Zhengzhou Coal Industry Group, employs some 4,100 workers who hail from 33 counties largely in the provinces of Henan, Anhui, Shandong and Sichuan, the state administration website said.
According to the Zhengzhou Coal Industry Group website, the company was established as the state-owned Xinmi Mining Bureau in 1958, but changed its name in 1989 and became an independent company in 1996.
In 2002, the company was restructured under the auspices of the Cinda Asset Management Corp and the Hongda Asset Management Corp and became China's first listed coal mining company, the website said.
10/22/2004 - 02:22 GMT - AFP