The Guilfordian

Issue date: 4/13/07 Section: World

Media Credit: AP The Chinese government recently tried to cover up a subway collapse and the resulting deaths.

"The construction company should have called for help," said first-year Xiaoyi Zhang, a China native. "People were dying."

The Beijing Times accused a state-owned company of attempting to cover up an accidental collapse in a Beijing subway tunnel, which initially left six workers missing.

According to The Washington Post in Beijing, the Chinese police detained 10 people whom they believed to be connected to a collapse of a Beijing subway tunnel that was being built for the 2008 Olympics.

On March 31, the Xinhua News Agency reported that the collapse killed all six workers.

BBC News reported that the accident occurred on the morning of March 28, yet the construction company did not report the collapse until almost eight hours had passed. Instead, the company tried to minimize the press by privately attempting to rescue the trapped workers.

Beijing police officials told Xinhua that rescue operations were terribly delayed because of the company's alleged cover-up attempts, and the complicated underground conditions did not help ease the process.

"Workers' anger was palpable," said the Xinhua News Agency. "Signs showing the construction company's logo were defaced at the construction site."

Moreover, BBC News reported that project managers warned their workers against having any contact with the media or the police. They took extra precautions by confiscating their mobile phones. The project supervisor and the tunnel designers were strong suspects in this accident, yet they were not among the individuals detained.

A labor contractor working for the construction company, China Railway 12th Bureau Group Co. Ltd, has fled from the area.

According to BBC News, the Beijing police were first informed of the accident by a secret report made by a construction worker from the nearby Henan province to his local police. The police department in Henan then relayed the information to the paper.

The People's Daily newspaper reported that the bodies of three of the workers were brought to the surface; the bodies of the remaining three were trapped under layers of earth and concrete, and rescuers were still struggling to save them.

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