Romanian Dies in Mine's Second Collapse This Year

A Romanian miner has died and one was wounded after they were trapped on Wednesday in a coal mine in Jiului Valley, in the Southern Carpathians, when a gallery collapsed at dawn.

The two workers spent hours trapped in the mine before the rescue teams reached them at 10am, union representatives told the media.

"The rescue teams managed to reach the site of the accident and are administering first aid to the victims. One of them is semi-conscious, the other is stable," the spokesperson of the Emergency Inspectorate in Hunedoara County said.

However, the rescue team later announced that they could not save the second miner's life after he became unconscious.

The accident took place in Lupeni mine, where two miners died after being trapped for 17 hours underground in October 2017. Another eight men saved themselves.

An investigation concluded in February that the gallery collapsed because the support pillars could not stand the weight. Nobody has been prosecuted yet for the incident.

The Lupeni mine, operated by the state-owned Hunedoara Energy Complex, opened in the 1930s. It was scheduled to close in 2018. However, the government asked the European Union in 2017 to delay its shut-down for five years.

The mine employs 1,100 people and produces about 2,000 tons of coal a day. Over 220 miners have died over time in the mine.

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