Miscellaneous

Citation

(2005), "Miscellaneous", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 14 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.2005.07314aac.008

Miscellaneous

30 April 2004Flooded coal mine, Wuhai, China

Fifteen miners trapped in a flooded coal mine in northern China are feared dead. Officials say rescuers are trying to reach the workers trapped since Friday morning (April 30) in the flooded mine in the Inner Mongolian city of Wuhai. The flood occurred after miners had either dug into an abandoned mine shaft filled with water or hit an underground spring. Police had detained both the chairman and head of the mine. The mine had been closed by authorities last week because of concern over its ventilation but it had been secretly reopened by management.

13 May 2004Collapse of gangway, shipyard, St Nazaire, France

The collapse last year of a walkway on passenger Queen Mary 2 that killed 15 people was due to a technical problem, public prosecutors in western France said today. “There were a design problem with the walkway,” prosecutor Pierre-Marie Block told a press conference, presenting the conclusions of a report drafted by three experts about the deadly November 15 accident. Block explained that the gangway connecting the deck of the vessel to the quayside lacked diagonal support beams, causing it to collapse. He said the number of people on the walkway at the time was not a factor. The accident, which took place in the shipyard in the port of St Nazaire while the vessel was still undergoing offshore testing, also left 28 people injured.

8 June 2004Collapse of coal mine, Fangshan District, China

Rescuers are searching for ten miners trapped underground after a tunnel collapsed at noon on Sunday (June 6) in a coal mine on the outskirts of Beijing. The accident occurred in Da’anshan Coal Mine in Fangshan District, 90 km from downtown Beijing, while 16 miners were working underground in the east and west tunnels. Those trapped were working in the east tunnel. Local leaders, including Beijing Mayor Wang Qishan, and senior officials from the State Administration of Work Safety, rushed to the scene to direct the rescue work. It is a tough task to rescue the trapped as the east tunnel collapsed completely, not partly, said rescuers.

11 June 2004. Rescue workers have found that all ten people trapped since Sunday (June 6) in a collapsed suburban Beijing mine have died, local media reported today. The workers in the Beijing Coal Corp Daan Shan Mine turned up dead yesterday night after some 100 hours of rescue work, according to the Beijing Times.

9 June 2004Collapse of building, Dhaka, Bangladesh

A six-storey apartment building collapsed early today in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka, killing at least 11 people and injuring several others. About 25 people were feared trapped inside, rescuers said. Some 60 people were asleep in the brick and cement building in Dhaka’s impoverished Shakharibazar district when some of the lower apartments crumbled. Rescuers found seven people dead in the rubble, and four badly injured people died on the way to hospital, said Selim Newaz, a fire fighter at the scene. Among the dead were two women and two children. At least eight injured people, including a 70-year-old woman, had been admitted to hospital, he said. Newaz said the first three lower apartments of the building collapsed into a heap of debris and most victims were believed to be trapped there. The cause of the collapse was not immediately known, but neighbours said the owner recently added three floors to the original three-storey building, which was about 200 years old.