Rescue teams are trying to save dozens of workers who are still trapped underground after a coal mine explosion that left at least 28 dead and 28 injured in northwestern Turkey, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is headed this Saturday.
“Our wish is that the loss of human lives is not greater and that our miners can be saved,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan wished in a tweet published on Friday night.
The explosion occurred on Friday at 6:15 p.m. local time (5:15 p.m. French time) in a mine in the city of Amasra located on the shores of the Black Sea, and claimed the lives of 28 people, according to a new report released. by Turkey’s Health Minister Fahrettin Koca on Twitter, who clarified that 11 people who had left the mine were being treated in a hospital.
“A Firedamp Shot”
Rescue teams were hard at work trying to save dozens of workers trapped in tunnels 300 to 350 meters below sea level. According to Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, 49 of the 110 miners who were there at the time would be trapped underground. of the explosion
“We are really facing a sad panorama,” he described. The Minister went to the scene of the tragedy in the company of the Turkish Minister of Energy, Fatih Donmez.
“According to the first observations, it is a gas explosion,” explained Fatih Donmez.
Afad, Turkey’s state disaster management body, initially tweeted that a faulty transformer was the cause of the explosion, before retracting and explaining that the methane had ignited for “unknown reasons”.
“Sudden Pressure”
Footage released by Turkish media from the mine entrance showed relatives of the stranded miners, many crying, as rescuers provided freed mine workers with oxygen and transported them to nearby hospitals.
“I don’t know what happened,” a miner who was able to get out of the galleries unharmed by his own means told Anadolu news agency. “There was a sudden pressure and I couldn’t see anything”
As the explosion occurred just before sunset, rescue operations were slowed down by darkness.
“Almost half of the workers have been evacuated. Most are fine, but there are also serious injuries,” Amasra mayor Recai Cakir told the private Turkish channel NTV.
According to the local governor, a team of more than 70 people managed to reach a point in the well located about 250 meters deep. It was not yet clear that rescuers would be able to get closer to the trapped workers. The local prosecutor’s office opened an investigation into the accident.
Many accidents at work in Turkey
Occupational accidents are frequent in Turkey, where the strong economic development of the last decade has often come at the expense of safety standards, especially in construction and mining. The country was brutally aware of this during an accident in 2014 in Soma, in the west of the country, when 301 miners died in a coal mine, following an explosion and fire that had caused a shaft to collapse.
Turkish courts have handed down sentences of up to 22 years in prison and six months against five mine officials, found guilty of negligence.
Source: BFM TV
