An explosion that hit a coal mine in northwestern Turkey, on Friday, reminded us of the tragedies that this dangerous professional sector has witnessed over the years, which claimed thousands of lives.
The explosion, which occurred in the Turkish Black Sea city of Amasra mine, killed at least 40 people, while Interior Minister Suleiman Soylu said, 16 hours following the explosion, that 15 people were still stuck, and attempts were being made to rescue them.
“We hope that the loss of life will not be greater and that our miners will be rescued,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wrote in a tweet.
Turkey’s miners’ union attributed the blast to a buildup of methane, but other officials said it was too early to draw definitive conclusions regarding the cause of the accident.
Turkey had previously recorded the bloodiest similar accidents in Soma, in the west of the country, in 2014, when 301 workers were killed inside a coal mine, following an explosion and fire caused its collapse.
tragic accidents
The “Soma” explosion appears among the worst accidents recorded in the history of mines, but it is not, despite the huge number of casualties, the worst of its kind, as the “black record” of mine accidents is filled with incidents that witnessed tragic casualties.
The website “ThoughtCo” refers to other disasters, more tragic, including what happened in the Benxihu iron and steel mine.
Work began in this huge mine in 1905, and its days were under dual Chinese and Japanese control, but it turned to exclusive Japanese control during the Second World War, and it relied on forced labor.
On April 26, 1942, an explosion of coal dust, a common hazard in underground mines, killed 1,549 people, nearly a third of the workers on shift.
And the “frantic” attempts to cut off the ventilation and close the mine in order to put out the fire resulted in the death of many workers asphyxiation following they had survived the explosion.
It took 10 days to transport the bodies of the victims, who were all Chinese, with the exception of 31 Japanese.
The heaviest in Europe
On March 10, 1906, a coal dust explosion at the Courrières mine, northern France, killed at least two-thirds of the workers present, many of whom were children.
1,099 people died, while 13 workers were trapped for 20 days underground before they were rescued, three of whom were under the age of eighteen.
The tragic accident sparked angry strikes, while the exact cause of the coal dust ignition was not determined, and the incident is still the worst mining disaster in the history of Europe.
Mitsubishi mine
A Japanese mining disaster occurred on December 15, 1914, when a gas explosion at the Mitsubishi Hogyo Coal Mine in Kyushu killed 687 people, the deadliest accident in Japan’s history.
But samurai country will see more similar tragedies later. On November 9, 1963, 458 miners were killed at the Mitsui Miki mine in the southern archipelago, 438 of whom died from carbon monoxide poisoning, according to ThoughtCo.
This mine, the largest coal mine in Japan, did not stop operating until 1997.
Welsh disaster
On 14 October 1913, during the height of coal production in the United Kingdom, the Sengnid Welsh Mine disaster was likely caused by a methane explosion that ignited coal dust.
The death toll was 439, making it the UK’s deadliest mine accident.
It was also the worst in a series of mine disasters to hit Wales during the period of poor safety measures from 1850 to 1930.
Tragedy… and racial discrimination
On January 21, 1960, the largest mine disaster occurred in the history of South Africa. A rockfall that occurred in part of the mine led to the siege of 437 miners, 417 of whom died due to methane poisoning.
Another tragedy, ThoughtCo says, was that they might have been saved had there been no training or plans in place to drill holes large enough to free the trapped men.
After the disaster, the country’s mining authority contracted to purchase suitable drilling equipment, but the widows of white miners received more compensation than their black counterparts, due to the racial discrimination that prevailed in South Africa.