At 9:40 pm, while more than 200 miners were working at the mine floor, a firedamp explosion killed 164 workers, 2 of whom perished due to a building collapse caused by the explosion; 7 miners were listed as disappeared and several thousand people had to be evacuated. As of the next day, emergency responders freed and rescued 72 individuals. One of the survivors, stranded for 22 hours nearly 1,000 m underground, explained that trapped miners sought refuge in zones where the air was less suffocating. Located 200 km west of the Russian border in Heilongjang Province (north-eastern China), this coal mine, one of the region’s oldest, had been operated since 1958 by a large public-sector mining group. According to the press, victims’ families and friends accused the mine’s executives of deliberately neglecting safety in favour of profitability. Authorities had often delegated to the various regions the responsibility for enacting measures necessary to upgrade safety and avoid such accidents. The explosion might have been due to a ventilation problem, although this hypothesis was never confirmed. A quasi-official agency announced that victims’ families would receive 200,000 yuans (€21,020) in compensation for each deceased miner. Investigators sent by the central government ordered immediate closure of the mine. The State’s industrial safety agency accused mine management of safety negligence, noting that 5 days before the disaster, mine managers held a meeting to discuss the high gas concentrations detected inside the mine but concluded the session without adopting any measures. Two mine executives arrested by the police were dismissed from their posts.