GUJIAO, China — A provincial governor apologized for China’s worst industrial accident in a year, as sobbing relatives of the 74 coal miners killed in the underground explosions finished identifying the bodies today.
Weeping wives and mothers were supported by relatives as they knelt over bodies wrapped in plastic sheets at a morgue in the northern Chinese town of Gujiao in Shanxi province.
Shanxi governor Wang Jun lamented the lives lost in the accident.
“We say sorry to the victims and their families,” Wang was quoted as saying by official Xinhua News Agency.
Sunday’s disaster at the Tunlan coal mine marked a setback for China’s moderately successful efforts to stem the carnage in its mining industry, the world’s deadliest.
Although the accident’s cause has yet to be announced, Shanxi officials have formally acknowledged making errors, Xinhua said. The admission came in a report to the central government, but Xinhua did not give details.
The province will launch a yearlong safety campaign in its mines starting Sunday, Xinhua said. It wasn’t clear whether the campaign had been planned before the Tunlan mine disaster.
Underground mine explosions are usually caused when sparks or open flames set off accumulated coal gas.
Some survivors have said they were ordered out of the shaft before the blasts because the ventilation system had broken down. It was unclear how many may have been saved by the evacuation order.
Xinhua quoted the deputy director of the accident investigation team formed by the Cabinet as praising rescue efforts that lasted for 16 hours after the pre-dawn explosions ripped through the mine.
Of the 436 people underground at the time, 362 survived and 114 of those remain hospitalized with injuries.
The death toll was the highest from a China coal mine accident since December 2007, when gas exploded in a tunnel in Linfen city, also in Shanxi province, killing 105 miners.
China closed about 1,000 dangerous small mines last year, helping to bring about a 15 percent decline in mining deaths from the previous year to about 3,200.
As the linchpin in China’s mining industry, Shanxi is frequently rocked by major mining accidents, and top officials have been forced to apologize or resign over some of the worst disasters.
Wang’s predecessor, Meng Xuenong, stepped down last September after a wall supporting a mining dump collapsed, killing more than 260 people when a torrent of mud and industrial waste inundated a village of 1,300 residents.
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