Reflection on mining disasters around the world as Myanmar mourns dead

By AFP
05 July 2020
Reflection on mining disasters around the world as Myanmar mourns dead
Volunteers carry a victim of a landslide accident at a jade mining site in Hpakant, Kachin State, northern Myanmar, 03 July 2020. Photo: Zaw Moe Htet/EPA

As Myanmar families mourn the death of over 170 miners in a landslide at a jade mine in the north of the country, it is instructive to look at other deadly mining disasters around the world.

- January 25, 2019: BRAZIL –

Millions of tons of toxic mining waste engulfed houses, farms and waterways after a dam collapsed in southeastern Minas Gerais state, killing 270 people and devastating the mineral-rich Brumadinho region.

It was the second such tragedy involving Brazilian mining giant Vale in three years.

- January 6, 2019: AFGHANISTAN –

At least 30 people were killed when a gold mine collapsed in Badakhshan province in Afghanistan's northeast, near the borders with Tajikistan, China and Pakistan.

Villagers had dug a 60-metre (200-foot) shaft in a river bed to search for gold. They were inside when the walls fell in.

- November 22, 2015: MYANMAR –

A landslide at a jade mine in northern Myanmar's war-torn Kachin state killed at least 114, many of whom were asleep in their tents and buried when a towering mound of earth dumped by mining firms collapsed.

Those killed were thought to mainly have been itinerant miners, who scratch a living scavenging through mountains of waste rubble dumped by mechanical diggers used by mining firms at the centre of the country's multibillion-dollar jade industry.

- May 13, 2014: TURKEY –

Some 301 people were killed in Turkey's worst ever mining disaster, when one of the pits of the Soma mine became engulfed by flames and carbon monoxide, trapping hundreds of miners working inside.

Authorities said that the miners were killed after inhaling gas and toxic smoke from the blaze, which was caused when an abandoned pile of coal left next to an electrical transformer caught fire.

- September 8, 2008: CHINA –

A mudslide in the northern province of Shanxi killed 277 people after an illegal mining-waste reservoir burst its banks following heavy rain.

A total of 58 government and company officials were convicted over the disaster and sentenced to prison terms, some for life.

- November 18, 2007: UKRAINE –

An explosion 1,000 metres (3,300 feet) underground at the Zasyadko pit, one of Ukraine's three biggest mines, killed 101 people.

- July 19, 1997: TANZANIA –

More than 100 miners were buried alive when the roof of a gold mine collapsed in the African country's northwestern Kagera region.

Authorities suspected the collapse may have been caused by congestion after scores of miners entered the pit, believed to be rich.

Among the worst mining disasters of all time are an underground coal dust explosion in Courrieres, northern France, that killed 1,176 people in 1906, and a similar disaster in China's Manchuria region that killed 1,549 in 1942.

AFP