NANCHANG, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- A two-week effort to rescue nine miners
trapped in a flooded coal mine in east China's Jiangxi Province ended on
Tuesday, with the miners declared dead.
Rescuers failed to find the miners' bodies during a search of the shafts
where the workers were believed to have been, according to the rescue
headquarters.
The rescue workers only found spare working clothes and mining tools.
The nine miners were believed to be either buried under debris from a shaft
collapse or swept to the bottom of the mine by the floodwaters, the headquarters
said.
The flood occurred around 3:30 a.m. on Oct. 28 at Lingxian coalmine, a
township-owned mine in Le'an County, central Jiangxi, trapping ten people.
One miner, Huang Guigen, 45, was rescued after being trapped for three days
in the shaft. Huang was working alone when the flooding occurred, and he was in
an area not inundated by the flood.
According to Xu Jianhui, head of Le'an county, the mine will be closed. The
owner will pay a total of 280,000 yuan (37,500 U.S. dollars) in compensation to
the family of each victim.
The owner has paid out 200,000 yuan per family and the remainder will be
paid by Thursday, Xu said.