Reporter Tran Ngoc Duy, Lao Dong Newspaper Representative Office in Quang Ninh, said that in that industrial accident, he was the only resident reporter in Quang Ninh who had access to the scene.
Early in the morning of October 11, 2005, while he was still sleeping, he received a phone call from an acquaintance participating in the labor safety inspection team of Quang Ninh province, quickly informing him about a mine accident at 8:45 p.m. on October 10, 2005. , at Mining Site 5, Mong Duong Coal Company , Cam Pha, causing 3 workers to be buried.
The three workers in distress were Doan Van Toan, born in 1983 in Phu Cu district (Hung Yen province); Nguyen The Thang, born in 1982 in Tien Lang district (Hai Phong city); Nguyen Thanh Chieu, born in 1970 in Ninh Thanh district (later separated into Ninh Giang and Thanh Mien districts), Hai Duong province.
He quickly got up and tried to contact the car in the working group of the Labor Federation of Quang Ninh province to enter the accident scene. At 10:00 a.m. on October 11, 2005, a large number of people and rescue equipment gathered at the site of Mong Duong Coal Company. Everyone's face was worried. Occasionally there would be loud shouts of orders from the coal industry commander to mobilize rescue teams and teams to urgently take turns going down to the furnace to help search for victims.
Reporter Tran Ngoc Duy followed the rescue team from the coal industry into the elevator and moved more than 100 meters below the sound level on a longwall road.
From here, walk a few hundred meters down the furnace road to get close to the area where the furnace collapsed and buried 3 workers. Upon arriving, voices echoed from several dozen meters from the rescue team announcing that they had found the bodies of 3 workers (who had died) and were preparing to find a way to get the bodies out.
The order from a coal industry commander at the search site said to hurry and keep the rescuers safe (because when digging for coal and using cribs to get workers out, they could collapse at any moment)... After 30 minutes of waiting, a voice rang out from a dark furnace branch, "Brothers, prepare to take the first victim's body out."
“To capture that moment, I stood at the foot of the kiln with many workers to welcome the body of the first kiln worker and continuously took pictures. Next, the second and third victims were also carried on a stretcher and quickly taken from a small narrow tunnel to the longwall and moved to the elevator to the ground..." - reporter Tran Ngoc Duy recalled.
Information about the unfortunate accident and photos taken by reporter Tran Ngoc Duy at the scene were published promptly and exclusively on Lao Dong Newspaper.
However, since then, nearly 20 years later, that photo has continuously appeared in newspapers to illustrate accident information at coal mining companies in Quang Ninh. But most of them do not credit the source, or just write "internet source", because many people do not know who the author is.
Perhaps, that photo will continue to be used both in the press and on social networks in the near future, to illustrate information about labor accidents in underground coal mining in Quang Ninh.
