“SULPHUR SMELL”
Survivor and injured miner Wang Yong told CCTV there was a “puff of smoke” and he smelled sulphur.
He recalled seeing people choked by the smoke before he fainted.
“I lay down for about an hour and woke up by myself. I called the people next to me and got out of the mine together,” Wang said, according to CCTV.
The death toll was a sharp rise from the eight fatalities reported on Saturday morning. Xinhua said in an earlier report that dozens were trapped underground after levels of carbon monoxide were found to have “exceeded limits”. Some of those trapped underground were in “critical condition”, the report said.
China has significantly reduced coal mine fatalities – often caused by gas explosions or flooding – since the early 2000s through more stringent regulations and safer practices. The Liushenyu incident, though, was one of the deadliest reported in China in the past decade.
