The death toll in this weekend’s Heilongjiang mining disaster has been raised to 104, making it the worst mining accident in two years in China, Bloomberg reports:
Four miners are still trapped underground, the official Xinhua News Agency said. A total of 528 were working when the blast occurred at 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 21 at the Xinxing mine in northeastern China, the State Administration of Work Safety said on its Web site.
The accident may spur China, which relies on the fuel to generate 80 percent of its power, to order its second nationwide safety check on coal mines in three months. The death toll at the Xinxing mine is the highest since 105 were killed at the Xinyao pit in Shanxi in December 2007, the China Daily said.
“The incident will have an impact on future coal supply,” Li Dagang, a coal analyst with Essence Securities Ltd, said by telephone in Shanghai today. “It may trigger stringent safety checks all across the country,”