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Nov. 12 - Rescuers on Sunday recovered the bodies of the last two missing miners and ended their operation at a colliery in southwest China's Guizhou Province, where a gas leak killed 35.
One body was retrieved1 at 2:30 a.m. and the other at 3:24 a.m., said sources with the emergency rescue headquarters at Qunli Colliery in Nayong County. Eighty-six miners were working in the shaft2 when the gas leak occurred at 1:44 p.m. on Thursday. Fifty-two were rescued, but one died after emergency treatment. Management of the mine has agreed to pay 200,000 yuan (26,667 U.S. dollars) in compensation for each victim. Qunli is a village-run colliery with more than 100 employees. Its designed annual output is 300,000 tons. The State Council will send an investigation3 team to look into the cause of the accident. Zhao Tiechui, director of the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety, has blamed the accident on management faults. "It wouldn't have happened had adequate precautionary measures been taken." Minutes of a meeting attended by mine managers last year indicated a gas leak on Oct. 24, 2006. Management, seeing no casualties, downplayed the accident by imposing4 fines from 200 to 500 yuan (26 to 66 U.S. dollars) on three managers, and did not report to the local safety watchdog. "If they did [report], the mine would have been forced to suspend production for a safety overhaul5, which could have lasted from two to six months," an investigator6 said on condition of anonymity7. Neither the mine owners nor the local government would willingly suspend production because in the backwater agricultural county of Nayong, 70 percent of the financial revenues come from the coal industry. As winter heating drives up energy demand, coal prices in Guizhou Province have increased by almost 30 percent. Coal output is expected to exceed 100 million tons this year in Guizhou, a major supplier for China's ambitious west to east power transmission project, compared with 36 million tons in 2000. Its power generating capacity has more than tripled from 5 million kilowatts8 in 2000 to 18 million kilowatts in the first 10 months of this year. At least 70 percent of the newly installed generators9 are fueled by coal. Despite the central government's call for energy conservation, the high consuming sectors10, including power, non-ferrous metal, chemical and metallurgy, still contributed 52.3 percent of Guizhou's industrial growth in the first nine months. The rapid development of these industries, plus the high national demand for coal, had enticed11 many private mine owners to seek profits at the risk of lives, said Song Ming, an economist12 with the Guizhou Provincial13 Academy of Social Sciences. The government has warned of risks in the coal industry as output is boosted to provide heating fuel for the winter months, though fewer accidents were reported in the first 10 months. From January to October, China reported 3,069 deaths in 1,920 colliery accidents, down by 20.2 percent and 19 percent respectively from the same period last year, the State Administration of Work Safety said.
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