The initial cave-in of one of the pit’s walls struck at around 1:00 p.m. Wednesday, burying people and mining trucks below in tons of rocks and sand. It was followed about five hours later by the additional landslide, forcing the work suspension.
The official Xinhua News Agency said about 900 rescuers with heavy equipment were on the scene and they had resumed the search by Thursday morning.
Chinese President Xi Jinping called for “all-out efforts in search and rescue” and for “ensuring the safety of people’s lives and property and maintaining overall social stability.”
Images of the collapse distributed by CCTV showed a massive wall of debris rushing down a slope onto people and vehicles below.
The company running the mine, Inner Mongolia Xinjing Coal Industry Co. Ltd., was fined last year for multiple safety violations ranging from insecure routes into and out of the pit, to unsafe storage of volatile materials and a lack of training for its safety staff, according to the news website The Paper.
Inner Mongolia is a key region for mining of coal and various minerals and rare earths, which critics say has ravaged the region’s landscape of mountains, grassy steppes and deserts.
China overwhelmingly relies on coal for power generation but has tried to reduce the number of deadly mine accidents through a greater emphasis on safety and the closure of smaller operations that lacked necessary equipment.
The cause of the accident remains under investigation.
China has recorded a slew of deadly industrial and construction accidents in recent months as a result of poor safety training and regulation, official corruption and a tendency to cut corners by companies seeking to make profits.
Despite those high-profile incidents, the overall number of industrial accidents fell by by 27 percent in 2022, when much of China’s economy was shut down under the zero-COVID policy, over the previous year, the Ministry of Emergency Management announced last month. The number of deaths in such accidents also fell 23.6 percent, the ministry said.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
