By intern reporter Xu Kai

Wu Guixian was working at home during the wee hours of the morning August 1 when she heard an eerie rumbling from the edge of her village.

A mountain of iron mine debris was on the move.

“The mountain had collapsed, and the tailings were rolling down,” Wu recalled. She quickly woke her family, and they ran for their lives.

Meanwhile, in the same village of Majiazhuang Shigou in Shanxi Province’s Loufan County, 16-year-old Si Xiaomei was watching overnight TV. She also heard the awful rumbling and alerted her family. They, too, escaped.

Dozens of villagers, however, did not survive the collapse of the enormous tailings pile at the Jian Shan Iron Mine. The official news agency Xinhua said about 800,000 cubic meters of debris slid into the village, the edge of which is less than 200 meters from the manmade mountain. More than half the village and numerous homes were buried.

Two weeks after the disaster, an official death count had not been released. Yet a Caijing investigation determined at least 39 people died, many in their sleep.

Caijing interviewed villager Hao Cungui, for example, whose brother Hao Aicun and his family of five were buried alive.

As of August 14, nine of the 11 bodies dug from the rubble had been identified. All nine were migrant workers.

Many of the village’s residents had moved from other areas to make a living by picking ore from the tailings, earning sometimes 100 yuan a day. Some 56 of the estimated 276 migrants had moved from neighboring Jiaocheng County, while 150 hailed from Gansu Province, according to a Loufan government Web site.

What Went Wrong?

Exactly what happened remains unclear; a government task force assigned to investigate has yet to announce a cause of the disaster. The Xinhua report said experts from the Ministry of Land and Resources and other central government agencies had visited the scene as part of the investigation.

But it’s clear that a section of the enormous tailings pile gave way, sparking a landslide that flowed like a river into a valley where most of the village slept.

The mine area belongs to Taiyuan Iron and Steel (Group) Co. Ltd., also known as Tisco. The village is flanked by two hills, one of which has expanded with tailings from the mine. The debris – waste separated from iron ore during the mining process – has piled up ever since Jian Shan opened in 1992.
 
Local residents think excess waste dumping by Tisco put too much pressure on the mountain and triggered the landslide. But Su Fudou, who serves on the government investigation team as Tisco party secretary, told Caijing that experts had not determined whether the dumping and collapse were related.

Su acknowledged, however, that a large amount of waste had been piled on the ridge where the landslide occurred over the past two years.

According to industrial solid waste standards set by the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) in 2002, mine waste dumps should be no closer than 500 meters from residential areas to prevent ground sinkage. SEPA also requires dust prevention, dikes, retaining walls and other safety measures at tailings sites.

The standards particularly stipulate that, to avoid landslides, diversion channels should be built around storage and disposal sites to prevent rainwater runoff from destabilizing the foundations of debris piles.

However, these steps were not taken at Jian Shan. One mine worker, who once worked with the tailings, told Caijing she   always dumped waste directly on top of the peak, and saw no need for disposal standards.

Meanwhile, oversight by the Loufan County Environmental Protection Agency is thin. According to an agency staffer, the county has only a few general rules for solid waste including mine tailings that call for burying, covering with loess and maintaining vegetation. But he said “in reality, nobody implements” the rules.

Actually, Jian Shan’s owners were aware of the risks to local residents when the mine first opened 16 years ago. At that time, said incumbent village head Hao Jizhong, the mine paid 650,000 yuan to relocate the village from the valley to the eastern slope of the mountain. Some moved, but others stayed because there wasn’t enough space at the new site, the valley was warmer, and water was easier to get.

Those who did move, however, rented their old homes in the original village to migrant waste pickers.

Uncontrolled digging aggravated the landslide risk. According to a Shanxi Evening News report, several people died in a nighttime landslide in May 2006 triggered by at least two excavators and two trucks that entered the area by jumping a roadblock.

Mine officials also tried to relocate villagers late last year, after the county government sent inspectors to evaluate the land and housing. They offered to compensate villagers who moved to the distant town of Chenjiazhuang. But at a meeting with local and Jian Shan officials in February, villagers rejected the offer.
Some villagers argued their proposed new home lacked arable land. Others, according to a source, were unwilling to leave the mine where they could earn a decent living.

Jian Shan has brought a measure of wealth. Many villagers drive trucks or operate equipment to pick through tailings for ore, which has become more valuable in recent years. Others process the ore.

Hao said that, in pre-mine days, the village was known as a “bachelor village” because no one wanted to marry its impoverished men. Now, many village men have married. Some own homes and cars.

Victim Compensation

Tisco responded to the latest disaster by feeding and housing survivors who lost relatives in the landslide at three hotels in Caijiazhuang, about 5 kilometers from the mine.

Although many victims’ bodies remain under the rubble, Tisco has offered to compensate families of the deceased. The families can get a one-time settlement of 230,000 yuan, including 200,000 yuan cash and 30,000 yuan for funerals and other expenses.

Native villagers and migrant workers alike have received the compensation, which Tisco offered just days after the landslide.

Despite the compensation, the atmosphere at the base of the tailings mountain is heavy with grief.

In a sign of mourning, villagers tied strips of red cloth around the doors of their homes and cars, on cattle horns, and even around their own waists. They say red cloth wards off evil, and helps them pray for peace.

1 yuan = 14 U.S. cents