Death toll from Philippines' coal mine blast rises to 54
Death toll from Philippines' coal mine blast rises to 54
MANILA (AFP): The death toll from a massive gas explosion in the Philippines' biggest coal mine rose to 54 yesterday as rescuers battled noxious fumes to find 20 workers still missing one day after the accident.
Asked whether any of the missing miners was still alive, Debbie Diokno, a spokeswoman of the state-owned energy giant Philippine National Oil Co. (PNOC), replied "it's hard to say."
The blast ripped through the remote PNOC-Energy Development Corp. (PNOC-EDC) colliery near Malangas town at 7:45 p.m. (1145 GMT) Monday, trapping 74 out of the 170 miners working in underground tunnels at the time, officials said.
A total of 96 other miners have been rescued, and six of them were airlifted to the central city of Cebu with severe burns. The mine is located 760 kilometers south of Manila.
Company officials said 50 rescuers with oxygen equipment and a screen to protect them from deadly gases were attempting to reach the blast site, which was filled with carbon monoxide.
"It's the worst coal mining disaster in Philippine mining history," Energy Undersecretary Rufino Bomasang told a news conference. Another accident in the central island of Cebu in the mid-1980s claimed 27 lives, he added.
Press Secretary Jesus Sison told reporters President Fidel Ramos had ordered officials of the PNOC coal subsidiary, the army and the police to speed up the rescue work, and released calamity funds for the survivors and the families of the dead.
Miserable
Cecilio Tura, the town mayor of Malangas, said in a radio interview that anxious wives and grieving widows flocked to the mine site to await the outcome of the rescue and to the morgues to claim the bodies of the dead.
"They look miserable," he added.
PNOC-EDC President Nazario Vazquez said survivors reported encountering a water pocket at a tunnel about 150 meters below the ground which "gave way and was followed by the release of methane gas."
He said they still had to determine what caused the spark that set off the explosion.
"We could not have done anything to detect the gas," he added.
The fatalities were discovered in the main tunnel about 100 meters from the explosion site, he said. Those who suffered burns were caught by the blast as they were retreating, while most victims died of asphyxiation.
Methane gas is a colorless, odorless, flammable gas produced by decomposing organic matter in mines.
The Malangas mine, which produces 200,000 tons of the best coal grade used for power generation in the central Philippines, will be shut down, Vazquez said, adding that there was enough inventory for 45-60 days.
Bomasang said this kind of accident was "common in underground mines all over the world," but "the question is why there was an explosion."
The government acquired the mine from a private firm in 1982.