MANDALAY, Myanmar \u2014 At least 54 jade miners in northern Myanmar were believed to be dead on Tuesday after a huge mound of tailings collapsed into an open-pit mine, burying workers and heavy equipment, officials said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The disaster occurred late Monday night in the remote Hpakant area of Kachin State, where miners produce billions of dollars\u2019 worth of jade each year under harsh working conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rescuers began searching for survivors after dawn on Tuesday, but officials said there was little chance that anyone would be found alive at the mine, which is about 100 feet deep and covers about five acres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Three bodies were recovered by late afternoon, said Tin Soe, a member of Parliament who represents the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t hold out much hope because the bodies are buried under mud and it\u2019s really difficult to retrieve them,\u201d said U Naing, a supervisor for Myanmar Thura, one of the companies operating the mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Landslides are common in the jade mining area and can claim 100 or more lives at a time. Dozens were swept away<\/a> by a landslide in Hpakant last year, and at least 120 were buried<\/a> in 2015 after the collapse of a mound of tailings, a mudlike waste byproduct of mining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kachin is Myanmar\u2019s northernmost state and borders China and India. Much of Myanmar has been racked by fighting between the military and ethnic rebels, but the lucrative jade mining area has largely remained under government control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the anti-corruption group Global Witness, in 2014 Myanmar\u2019s jade business was worth as much as $31 billion<\/a>, almost half the country\u2019s gross domestic product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paul Donowitz, the campaign leader for Myanmar at Global Witness, said disasters keep occurring in Hpakant because the jade sector places profit before human life and the government is unwilling or incapable of regulating it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MANDALAY, Myanmar \u2014 At least 54 jade miners in northern Myanmar were believed to be dead on Tuesday after a huge mound of tailings collapsed into an open-pit mine, burying workers and heavy equipment, officials said. The disaster occurred late Monday night in the remote Hpakant area of Kachin State, where miners produce billions of dollars\u2019 worth of jade each… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[164],"class_list":["post-3530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-www-nytimes-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3530"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3542,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3530\/revisions\/3542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}