Above-ground rescuers are all systems go yesterday in the effort to save 69 workers trapped deep in a coal mine in Henan Province. The mine in the province's Shanxian County was flooded on Sunday. The trapped miners have been in phone contact with rescuers. -Xinhua

The 69 Chinese miners in a flooded coal pit spent a second day trapped underground yesterday, but were last night safe and in contact with rescuers via phone.

Rescuers have installed pipes to deliver food and water to the miners, but were still trying to work out how to propel the supplies down the shaft, the China News Service said.

"All 69 miners are safe, and their mood is stable," the news agency quoted a statement by the government's work-safety administration as saying.

Rescue workers were still trying to remove mud and sediment from a passage that would allow them to pump more water out of the mine.

Rescuers are maintaining phone contact with the miners, who have been trapped in the pit in central Henan Province since Sunday morning.

Experts are trying to send food and drinking water through the 800-meter-long ventilation pipes to the miners, who were working when the flood triggered by rainstorms hit the region about 8:40am.

The trapped miners have not reported any injuries through the fixed-line phone, but asked for food and water at 3pm yesterday. The area where the miners are trapped is dry and still has electricity, but ventilation is poor.

Just 33 of the 102 miners working underground at the time managed to escape the Zhijian Coal Mine, in Shanxian County, Sanmenxia City, about 200 kilometers west of Henan's provincial capital of Zhengzhou. The floodwater is believed to have come from a nearby river.

Hundreds of rescuers, including police, are struggling to prevent more water entering the shaft, clearing away silt and providing ventilation and oxygen to the trapped miners.

The state-owned mine was established in 1958. It was designed to produce 210,000 tons a year, but its actual annual output is 300,000 tons.

Senior officials have arrived at the site to oversee rescue work, including Xu Guangchun, secretary of the Henan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China; Li Chengyu, governor of Henan; Li Yizhong, director of the State Administration of Work Safety; and Zhao Tiechui, director of the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety.

China's coal industry is the world's deadliest, killing an average of 13 people a day last year. Most of the deaths occur in small, private and unregulated mines, but large state-run collieries report much higher death tolls when accidents hit.

At least nine people were killed in a coal-mine accident in Linfen City in the northern Shanxi Province on July 5, but the mine's management concealed the accident for nearly a month, local authorities said yesterday.

The Liziping Coal Mine, in Xiangning County, Linfen City, was flooded that day, but managers failed to inform authorities, a spokesman for the Shanxi Provincial Work Safety Administration said.

The administration learned of the accident after an anonymous tip-off and immediately started an inquiry into the accident, he said.

A working team was set up yesterday to investigate those responsible for covering up the accident.