Earlier this week, a coal mine blast in Amagá, Colombia, near Medellin, occurred during a shift change, killing 19, and trapping over 50 miners, with few survivors. There is no hope that any of the trapped miners will be recovered alive.
http://axisoflogic.com/...
In an update to this story, a total of 23 bodies have been recovered, and 28 miners were rescued, with 54 miners still trapped.
For those who know Spanish, here's a video about the state of inspections in the San Fernando mine:
Upshot: even though the mine was pretty sophisticated by the standards of mines in Antioquia province (it had reinforced arch walls in the tunnel leading to the mine), the state of the ventilation indicated that people really shouldn't have been allowed to work there.
From the article:
Less than a year ago, in August 2009, nine miners were killed at a nearby mine, also by a methane explosion. No new safety requirements resulted from that explosion.
Walter Restrepo survived the San Fernando explosion with severe burns on his body; he was one of six miners that barely made it out of the mine. Interviewed at a local hospital, Restrepo described how, as he was leaving his shift, the explosion threw him and covered him in flames. “These were not normal flames, more like a burning shower, as if it were raining fire on top of me.”
Relatives of the victims responded to the explosion by gathering at the mine entrance in search of news about their loved ones. Among the victims and the missing are many miners related to each other, escalating the impact of the explosion on the affected families. Some recalled how, in 1977, an explosion at the same mine killed 86 workers.
María Adelaida Ossa, whose brother and five cousins are among the missing, spoke to the Bogotá daily El Tiempo about her brother, who was hired at the mine a month and a half ago: “This is the only work available for young men in this region. He had moved from the city of Pereira in search of work with which to support his three-year-old son. What is really sad is that they are bringing out [survivors] with missing hands and feet.”
Ossa’s statement barely scratches the surface in terms of working conditions for the Colombian working class. High levels of unemployment and economic insecurity force Colombian youth to risk their lives every day in mines whose operators are uninterested in providing safe conditions. Those same operators take advantage of those same high levels of unemployment to offer hunger wages. At the San Fernando mine, as in other mines in the region, wages range from US $300 to US $600 per month.
Apparently regulations don't require mines to be shut down if they don't have gas detectors and exhaust tubes.
This mine, while small by Colombian standards - the El Cerrejon strip mine produces 30 million metric tons per year, or 40% of Colombia's total output, produced about 240,000 metric tons per year. This is about one fifth of the 2008 output of the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, where an explosion killed 29 miners, so it's not a tiny mine.
It's just a damn shame that people can be paid survival wages for such a dangerous job. And if America conservatives have their way, that's what we'll get here.
Never vote conservative.