Not much hope for miners
Here’s a few grim statistics about the flooded mine in Xintai, Shandong where 172 miners are trapped. First, the water rose as high as 20 meters below the mine entrance so there’s virtually no chance that anyone is alive down there. But even if there are some survivors, there’s an estimated 12 million cubic meters of water in the pits. Xinhua reports that when all the high-powered pumps are working (as of Sunday evening, two days after mine flooded, they still weren’t) they’ll be able to remove 6,000 cubic meters an hour. Most reports stop there, but Jingbao did the same calculations I did - at that speed, it would take 83 days to clear all the water. Of course, the rescue workers wouldn’t have to pump out all the water to reach the men. But supposing they only needed to remove 10% of it - that would still take more than a week.
And we shouldn’t forget the nine men in the other flooded mine nearby.
Some of the things I wonder: how much do these high-powered pumps cost? When a mine is as big as this one - there were 756 men underground when the disaster happened - why hasn’t it got its own pumps that are powerful enough instead of having to wait for this equipment to be shipped from other provinces?
