Nfter the mine accident in northern Turkey, the death toll rose to 25. Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Saturday in the short message service Twitter. Eleven people rescued from the mine would be treated in hospital. The search continued overnight for other miners trapped by the explosion at the coal mine in the northeastern Black Sea port city of Amasra.
Authorities believed other people were trapped at the mine in the Black Sea province of Bartin, in the Black Sea district of Amasra. Presumably mine gas had exploded. The mine is located about 300 kilometers northeast of the capital Ankara.
According to the Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, 110 workers were in the mine at the time of the accident, 49 of them in a more vulnerable deeper part. The mine gas explosion happened about 300 meters below the surface, local media reported. Local governor Nurtac Arslan said five people were trapped at a depth of 350 meters and 44 others elsewhere at a depth of 300 meters. Arslan said 14 workers made it out of the mine under their own steam. More than 70 rescue workers penetrated 250 meters deep into the pit. However, the rescue was complicated because of the darkness.
Defective current converter as the cause?
The Turkish miners’ union attributed the explosion to a build-up of methane. The civil protection agency Afad said the explosion was apparently due to a defective transformer.
Television images showed hundreds of people gathered near the pit entrance. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sent his interior and energy ministers to the scene of the accident. He said on Twitter that he would visit the scene of the accident on Saturday to “coordinate” the rescue efforts. An investigation into the incident has been launched. The main opposition party, the social-democratic CHP, said the authorities had ignored a 2019 report by the Court of Auditors warning of the danger of a mine gas explosion at the mine. Local prosecutors said the incident was being treated as an accident and launched an official investigation.
There have been serious mine accidents in Turkey in recent years, partly due to poor safety regulations. In May 2014, Turkey experienced the worst mining accident in its history. 301 miners died in the accident at the mine in Soma in the west of the country. The tragedy sparked protests against the government of then Prime Minister Erdogan.
