At least 22 workers were killed and 28 others injured in an explosion at a coal mine in northwestern Turkey on Friday, while several dozen miners were left stranded about 300 meters below sea level.
The explosion happened at a mine in Amasra, a coastal town on the Black Sea. Rescue teams worked on Friday night to rescue dozens of workers trapped in tunnels trapped 300 and 350 meters below sea level, according to Turkey’s Maden-Is miners’ union.
Twelve wounded rescued
“Our rescue efforts continue. Twelve wounded were rescued,” said Nurtac Arslan, governor of Bartin province, on which Amasra depends. Rescue and medical teams and family members of stranded miners, many in tears, were seen in the first images broadcast by Turkish media of the mine’s entrance.
The union Maden-Is, quoted by the Turkish media, said the explosion was associated with an accumulation of firedamp. However, Turkish authorities believe it is early days to determine the cause of the blast.
Afad, Turkey’s public disaster management agency, first announced on Twitter that a faulty transformer was the cause of the blast before pulling out. According to the state agency Anadolu, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sent his energy and interior ministers to the country.
A precedent in 2014
“I don’t know what happened. There was pressure all of a sudden and I couldn’t see anything,” a miner told Anadolu, who got out of the mines unharmed on his own.
“At the time of the explosion there were 87 people in the mine. Almost half could be evacuated. Most are fine, but there are also serious injuries,” Amasra Mayor Recai Cakir told Turkish private broadcaster NTV.
Accidents at work are common in Turkey, where strong economic development over the past decade has often been at the expense of safety regulations, particularly in construction and mining.
The country became brutally aware of this after an accident in Soma (West) in 2014: 301 miners died in a coal mine after an explosion and fire caused a well to collapse.