More than 180 coal miners are trapped underground in eastern China after heavy rain caused a river to burst through a levee and inundate two separate shafts, the latest blow to the world's deadliest mining industry.
The official Xinhua news agency said 584 miners escaped after yesterday's incident at the state-run Huayuan Mining Corp. mine in Shandong province, but attempts to reach another 172 were hampered by continued flooding as soldiers raced to repair the river levee.
Nine other miners were trapped in the Minggong mine nearby, after 86 others there escaped, Xinhua said.
There was only a slim chance the trapped miners could survive, Wang Ziqi, director of the Shandong coal mine safety administration, told Xinhua.
"Nobody came up today, so everyone is waiting," a resident contacted by telephone told Reuters. "It doesn't look good."
The scene of weary emergency workers and anxious relatives echoed another rescue effort under way in the United States, which has a much cleaner safety record but where three people have died trying to save six miners trapped in a Utah coal mine.
Mining is risky worldwide, but China's coal industry is deadlier than any other country's, with about 2,163 coal miners killed in 1,320 accidents in the first seven months of the year.
Even in a country where mining accidents happen nearly daily, the scale of this latest accident stood out.
More than 200 millimeters of rain had fallen in Xintai, about 570 km southeast of Beijing, since Thursday, causing a 50-metre breach of a levee of the Wen river.
Water filled much of the 860-metre deep pit at the Huayuan mine, quickly overwhelming the mine's pumps. It was not known at what level most of the miners were trapped, but 14 were 30 meters (100 feet) underground, according to Xinhua.