The 2007 Shandong coal mine flood was an incident that occurred on August 28, 2007 in Xintai

Xintai

Xintai is a county-level city administered under Tai'an prefecture-level city, in the Shandong province of eastern China. It is located about 50km to the southeast of the city of Tai'an.-Climate:...

, Shandong

Shandong

' is a Province located on the eastern coast of the People's Republic of China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history from the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River and served as a pivotal cultural and religious site for Taoism, Chinese...

, People's Republic of China

People's Republic of China

China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

, when heavy rain caused a river to burst a levee

Levee

A levee, levée, dike , embankment, floodbank or stopbank is an elongated naturally occurring ridge or artificially constructed fill or wall, which regulates water levels...

 creating a flood into two mine shafts. By 8:50 am (1:50GMT), the mine was inundated underwater.

Damages and casualties

More than 200mm of rain had fallen in Xintai, causing a 50-metre breach of a levee of the Wen river. Water poured into the 860-metre deep pit at the Huayuan mine, quickly overwhelming the mine's pumps. The 172 miners were trapped in a 3,000-foot-deep mine shaft when a mine operated by the Huayuan Mining Co. Nine others were also missing, in a nearby mine run by a different company. None of the 181 miners, living or dead, were recovered from the two mines after the accident.

The Huayuan mine was flooded with an estimated 12 million cubic metres of water. If all six available pumps were used around the clock they could pump out about 120,000 cubic metres of water a day. But only four were operational. Unofficially, experts say that it would take almost 100 days to drain the water inside the mine.

Aftermath

An official at China.com.cn discussed the fact that signs of flooding had appeared in advance prior to the incident, and that the "disaster was completely avoidable." On September 6, the Shangdong provincial government issued a statement citing scientists who said that none of the miners would be able to make it out alive after that amount of time underground.