Rescuers are digging through tonnes of earth and rubble for 49 people who are missing after a landslide buried an open-pit mine.
The death toll in the disaster has now risen to five as conditions in the area remain dangerous and the search had to be suspended for several hours after a second landslide hit the gigantic facility in Inner Mongolia’s Alxa League in northern China.
The initial cave-in of one of the pit’s walls struck at around 1pm local time on Wednesday, burying people and mining trucks who were working below in tonnes of rocks and sand.
Five hours later an additional landslide hit, which forced the work to suspend.
The collapse left a pile of debris roughly 500m across and an estimated 80m high, with dramatic security-camera footage, showing an avalanche of rock and soil falling from one side of the mountain into the mine pit.
"I had just started work at 1.15pm when I realised that rocks were falling from the mountain," a hospitalised miner told state broadcaster CCTV on Thursday.
More than 470 rescue workers have been working at the scene, alongside 40 medical workers, team leader Wei Zhiguo told CCTV from the scene. An additional 200-member team has also been mobilised, he said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping called for “all-out efforts in search and rescue” and for “ensuring the safety of people’s lives and property and maintaining overall social stability.”
Images of the collapse distributed by CCTV showed a massive wall of debris rushing down a slope onto people and vehicles below.
The company running the mine, Inner Mongolia Xinjing Coal Industry Co. Ltd., was fined last year for multiple safety violations ranging from insecure routes into and out of the pit, to unsafe storage of volatile materials and a lack of training for its safety staff.
Local governments in several regions, including Inner Mongolia, Shanxi and Shaanxi, have ordered coal miners, especially at open-pit mines, to immediately conduct safety checks and local authorities to carry out inspections following the collapse.
Accidents are not uncommon in China, where industrial safety regulations can be poorly enforced.
In December 2020, 23 miners died after a carbon monoxide leak at a coal mine.
And in January 2021, 10 miners were killed in a blast at a gold mine in Shandong province.
The cause of the accident remains under investigation.
