At least 16 people died this Sunday after a fire in the Shanjiaoshu coal mine, in southwest China, which broke out around 8:10 a.m. (1:00 a.m. in Lisbon), local authorities reported.
The fire was extinguished, but “after preliminary checks, 16 people did not have vital signs,” the Panzhou city government said in a note published on its official website.
Preliminary results determined that “the conveyor belt caught fire,” the news release states.
The Panzhou city mine is about 3,600 kilometers southwest of the capital, Beijing.
Although safety in China’s mining sector has improved in recent decades, accidents remain frequent, often due to poor implementation of safety protocols, especially at more rudimentary sites.
In February, the collapse of a coal mine in the northern Inner Mongolia region left dozens of people and vehicles buried under a mountain of rubble. Authorities did not release the final death toll for months, and only in June revealed that 53 people had died.
Source: TSF
