The Dongxing Coal Mining Co. fire was an incident that began on Monday, March 15, 2010, in the main pit of Dongxing Coal Mining Co,

Xinmi Xinmi (), formerly Mi County (), is a county-level city of Henan Province, South Central China, it is under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Zhengzhou. The archaeological Bronze Age site Xinzhai __NOTOC__ Xinzhai () is an ea ...

Zhengzhou Zhengzhou (; ), also spelt Zheng Zhou and alternatively romanized as Chengchow, is the capital and largest city of Henan Province in the central part of the People's Republic of China. Located in north-central Henan, it is one of the National ...

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. Twenty-five miners died during the incident which, among other things, resulted in four local officials being removed from office. The fire began at 8:30 PM on Monday when electrical cables in the main pit caught on fire. At the time, 31 workers were in the mine and six were saved in the rescue operation that ended at around 2:00 AM the following morning. The mine was being renovated to increase its annual output to 150,000 tons from 60,000. Shuhe Wang, Deputy Director of the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety, said that mines that are being rebuilt were strictly forbidden from producing coal, but the Dongxing Coal Mining Co had ignored the ban and resumed production without a license. Wang blamed the incident on coal safety officials' lack of supervision. The Xinmi government acted quickly to crack down on company officials and government officials who should have prevented the disaster: Yingxi Su, a vice-mayor of Xinmi, Ruihui Fan, governor of Niudian township, Xinxian Zhu, a township official in charge of work safety, and Guoqi Pei, a deputy director of the Xinmi Coal Mine Bureau, were removed from office; three work safety inspectors who were responsible for overseeing the mine were dismissed; and Mancang Fu of Dongxing Coal Mining Co along with three directors were placed under criminal detention. The personal accounts of Fu and the three company directors were frozen as were the company's accounts. The dead miners were identified as migrants from

Henan Henan (; or ; ; alternatively Honan) is a landlocked province of China, in the central part of the country. Henan is often referred to as Zhongyuan or Zhongzhou (), which literally means "central plain" or "midland", although the name is al ...

Anhui Anhui , (; formerly romanized as Anhwei) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the East China region. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze River ...

and

Sichuan Sichuan (; zh, c=, labels=no, ; zh, p=Sìchuān; alternatively romanized as Szechuan or Szechwan; formerly also referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions) is a province in Southwest China occupying most of the ...

provinces.

References

* {{coord missing, Henan Coal mining disasters in China 2010 mining disasters 2010 disasters in China Zhengzhou Fires in China 2010 fires in Asia March 2010 events in China