The Luotuoshan coal mine flood was an incident that began on Monday, March 1, 2010, when a large amount of water flooded the Luotuoshan coal mine near the city of Wuhai in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. A total of 77 workers were underground when they broke into a large pool of Ordovician limestone water early in the morning. [1] By Monday evening, 45 were rescued and one was confirmed dead. [2] [3] All rescue operations were stopped after 14 days, when medical teams believed that the 31 trapped coal miners had no chance of survival. [2]
The rescue work was the largest coal mine mobilization in China's history with 40 professional rescue teams involved, comprising 20,384 people. [1] Infrared surveillance cameras and echo megaphones were used to try to detect life underground, [2] but were unsuccessful.
Workers continued pumping water out of the mine and attempting to stop the flooding after the rescue efforts were called off. 3,850 cubic meters of water were being pumped out every hour since the rescue efforts began, with around 100,000 cubic meters of water remaining in the mine on March 24. Yi Lan, a spokesperson for the rescue headquarters, said that workers were hoping to seal the mine pit with 50 million cubic meters of cement, rubble and water glass by April 4. [1]
The construction of the mine, which was still underway at the time of the incident, began in 2006 with the goal of producing 1.5 million tons of coal per year. The mine is owned by Wuhai Energy Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of China's largest coal producer Shenhua Group Corp. Ltd. [2]
A mining accident is an accident that occurs during the process of mining minerals or metals. Thousands of miners die from mining accidents each year, especially from underground coal mining, although accidents also occur in hard rock mining. Coal mining is considered much more hazardous than hard rock mining due to flat-lying rock strata, generally incompetent rock, the presence of methane gas, and coal dust. Most of the deaths these days occur in developing countries, and rural parts of developed countries where safety measures are not practiced as fully. A mining disaster is an incident where there are five or more fatalities.
The Quecreek Mine rescue took place in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, when nine miners were trapped underground for over 77 hours, from July 24 to 28, 2002. All nine miners were rescued.
The Crandall Canyon Mine, formerly Genwal Mine, was an underground bituminous coal mine in northwestern Emery County, Utah.
The Lofthouse Colliery disaster was a mining accident in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, on Wednesday 21 March 1973, in which seven mine workers died when workings flooded.
Events in the year 2007 in China.
The Cross Mountain Mine disaster was a coal mine explosion that occurred on December 9, 1911, near the community of Briceville, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. In spite of a well-organized rescue effort led by the newly created Bureau of Mines, 84 miners died as a result of the explosion. The likely cause of the explosion was the ignition of dust and gas released by a roof fall.
The 2008 Ukrainian coal mine collapse occurred at the Karl Marx Coal Mine in the city of Yenakiieve, Donetsk Oblast (province) of eastern Ukraine on June 8, 2008. The mine collapse was said to have been caused by a gas pipe explosion. The explosion occurred at a depth of about 1,750 feet (533 m). 37 miners were trapped underground at the time of the collapse, located 3,301 feet (1,006 m) below the surface of the earth. Additionally, five surface workers suffered from burns and other injuries in a blast that they described as one of the most powerful in the industry.
The 2007 Shandong coal mine flood was an incident that occurred on August 17, 2007 in Xintai, Shandong, People's Republic of China, when heavy rain caused a river to burst a levee creating a flood into two mine shafts. By 8:50 am (1:50GMT), the mine was inundated underwater.
The Shanxi mine blast was a pre-dawn explosion that occurred in a mine in Gujiao city near Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province of China on 21 February 2009. Four hundred and thirty six were in the mine at the time of the explosion. According to the state-run Xinhua News Agency, rescue efforts concluded at 6 p.m. (CST), February 22 with all trapped miners located; the death toll was 74, with 114 in the hospital and five in critical condition. Many of the injured are being treated for carbon monoxide poisoning. The death toll indicates that this is the most lethal accident reported in China's mining industry since December 2007, when 105 people died in a mine explosion—that accident also took place in Shanxi.
The Wangjialing coal mine flood was an incident that began on Sunday, March 28, 2010, when underground water flooded parts of the Wangjialing coal mine in the Shanxi province of People's Republic of China. A total of 261 people were in the mine when workers first broke through an abandoned shaft that was filled with water. Over 100 managed to escape, but 153 workers were trapped in nine different platforms of the mine.
The Avondale Mine disaster was a massive fire at the Avondale Colliery near Plymouth, Pennsylvania, on September 6, 1869. It caused the death of 110 workers. It started when the wooden lining of the mine shaft caught fire and ignited the coal breaker built directly overhead. The shaft was the only entrance and exit to the mine, and the fire trapped and suffocated 108 of the workers. It was the greatest mine disaster to that point in American history.
The Raspadskaya mine explosion was a mine explosion in the Raspadskaya mine, located near Mezhdurechensk in Kemerovo Oblast, Russia, which occurred on 8 May 2010. It was believed to have been caused by a buildup of methane. The initial explosion was followed by a second approximately four hours later which collapsed the mine's ventilation shaft and trapped several rescue workers. By 18 May 2010, 66 people were confirmed to have died with at least 99 others injured and as many as a further 24 unaccounted for.
On October 28, 2014, 18 miners were trapped underground in the Has Sekerler mine, a coal mine in the Turkish town of Ermenek. It is the second major accident at a Turkish mine in six months; the previous one was the Soma mine disaster in May 2014.
Mine safety is a broad term referring to the practice of controlling and managing a wide range of hazards associated with the life cycle of mining-related activities. Mine safety practice involves the implementation of recognised hazard controls and/or reduction of risks associated with mining activities to legally, socially and morally acceptable levels. While the fundamental principle of mine safety is to remove health and safety risks to mine workers, mining safety practice may also focus on the reduction of risks to plant (machinery) together with the structure and orebody of the mine.
In February 2016, a series of explosions caused the deaths of 36 people, including 31 miners and five rescue workers, at the Severnaya coal mine 10 kilometres north of the city of Vorkuta, Komi Republic, Russia. The explosions were believed to be caused by ignition of leaking methane gas. It is the second deadliest mining disaster of the 2010s behind the Soma mine disaster, and fourth deadliest of the 21st century thus far.
A flooded mine is one of the direct results of a mine's closure procedure. When a mine stops operating, its maintenance systems also stop, in which the dewatering systems are included. Without these systems the mine will get flooded by water that naturally occurs in rock formations in the ground.
The Notre-Dame Pit was one of the principal mine shafts of the Ronchamp Mining Company, located in North-Eastern France in the hamlet of Éboulet, the commune of Champagney, and the department of Haute-Saône. The pit was created by a rival company, The Forge Masters, which had owned the hamlet of Éboulet's mines since 1851, fifteen years before the Ronchamp Mining Company acquired them. As its supply of coal dwindled, the mine was converted into a water well used for pumping water used in the mining process to several other nearby mines. The pit was plugged in 1958, when all the coal mines formerly owned by Ronchamp were closed by the government utility, Électricité de France.
The Meghalaya mining accident happened on 13 December 2018, when 15 miners were trapped in a mine in Ksan, in the Indian state of Meghalaya. While five miners managed to escape, rescue efforts for the remaining 10 continued till 2 March 2019. The miners were trapped inside the coal mine at a depth of around 370 feet in Jaintia Hills district. The tunnel the miners were in flooded with water after they cut into an adjacent mine which was full of water from the nearby Lytein river.
On February 16, 1883, the Diamond No. 2 Coal Mine, near Braidwood, Illinois, flooded with snow melt and rain water. Seventy-four men and boys were trapped in the mine and perished. The 1883 Diamond Mine Disaster was one of the worst mining disasters in Illinois history.
