41 miners died and 28 injured after the explosion in a coal mine on Friday October 14 in Amasra in northwestern Turkey, according to authorities who announced the end of rescue operations on Saturday. More than 110 miners were there at the time of the explosion.
“Our first observations indicate that some of our friends (miners) lost their lives due to the high pressure and heat caused by the explosion”had indicated the Minister of Energy, Fatih Donmez, on the night of Friday to Saturday.
” I do not know what happened “told the Anadolu news agency one of the first miners to have been able to come out of the galleries unscathed by their own means. “There was a sudden pressure and I couldn’t see anything”, he said. According to the local governor, a team of more than 70 people quickly managed to reach a point in the well located some 250 meters deep. But the fire seems to have broken out several hours later.
Selon Fatih Donmez, “the fire in the galleries is now largely under control”as thick gray smoke billowed Saturday morning from the entrance to the mine.
State of shock
The Head of State, Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Twitter an exhaustive investigation: “Our judicial authorities will investigate in all its dimensions into this terrible accident which has devastated us. No negligence will be without consequences”he assured.
He also promised that the state would support and go “protect families” of the victims, whose funerals were already celebrated on Saturday morning in the neighboring villages, in accordance with Muslim tradition.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in power since 2003 and who will be a candidate for his succession next June, was to go before to the bedside of some of the 28 wounded evacuated to a hospital in Istanbul, an official told AFP.
Since the evening before, the relatives of the injured miners, consumed with anguish and many in tears, had been waiting for news at the entrance to the mine, noted an AFP photographer. Ambulances lined up stood ready to take care of any injured people. A woman in shock had to be evacuated by the emergency services, others prayed leaning on the barriers that surrounded the scene, while the surviving miners supported and comforted each other. They themselves participated in the rescue as much as possible: “We brought up the bodies of our comrades, it’s horrible for us”said one of them, interviewed by NTV.
Security rules
Accidents at work are frequent in Turkey, where the strong economic development of the past decade has often come at the expense of safety rules, particularly 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 were killed in a coal mine, after an explosion and a fire which had caused the collapse of a well.
Sentences of up to 22 years’ imprisonment and six months had been handed down by the Turkish courts against five mine officials, found guilty of negligence.