XINTAI, China (AP) – Rescue workers pumped water Monday from a flooded mine in eastern China but hopes were fading quickly for the safety of 181 miners trapped for three days.

Distraught family members shouted for information and one woman fainted as they waited for word on the missing miners at the Huayuan Mining Co. in Shandong province.

One group of 172 miners was trapped Friday afternoon when a dike on the Wen river burst under heavy rains, flooding the coal mine and a nearby shaft where nine other miners were trapped.

Rescuers had determined an approximate location of the miners as pumping continued and the water level dropped, said experts who were part of the rescue effort.

“We’ve determined the general location of the miners, the general area. There’s still some hope,” said Bu Changsheng, a water engineering expert.

Four industrial pumps were in place and two more were expected to be operational by Monday night. Officials were trying to deploy them deep into the shaft but had to drill holes in some places to get the pumps in.

Mr. Bu said it would take two days for the pumps to reach the bottom of the mine. “The water level has already started to fall,” he said.

Rescue officials and state media have given no indication if the miners are still alive after being trapped for such a long time.

About 20 relatives of the missing miners showed up at the gate Monday morning, about half of the number that came Sunday.

The coal company set up an inquiry desk for them, which an official said was there to answer questions and to take down family members’ names and contact information. He refused to say how many people had registered. He also said the company had not distributed any list with names of missing miners.

In contrast to the blanket media coverage in the U.S. of rescue efforts for six miners in Utah, accounts in China’s wholly state-owned media have been terse.

On Monday, the main newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, the People’s Daily, ran an Aug. 1 story on the front page on the successful rescue of 69 miners from a flooded mine in Henan province. A much shorter story on the trapped miners in Shandong ran on page 5.

Television crews in Xintai were asked not to film and in turn were videotaped by security officials.
If the Huayuan miners are found dead, the accident would be among the worst of its kind in 58 years of communist rule, second only to an explosion that killed 214 miners in the northeast in 2005.

China’s mines are woefully dangerous, with an average of 13 miners dying everyday. The toll has become a blot for the communist leadership, which has called for improved safety, especially since the country, with its torrid economy, depends on coal to meet two-thirds of its energy needs.