Mining disasters

The death toll in the mining disaster at Soma in Western Turkey has now passed 300, and the energy minister has said there may be more bodies to be recovered. 485 miners are reported to have escaped or been rescued.

Police had to use tear gas and water cannon to disperse protesters complaining about safety standards and demanding that the government resign. Lawyers who came to advise victims’ families have been detained.

One survivor claimed inspectors never visited the lower reaches of the mine, but the government said it had been inspected ‘vigorously’ 11 times since 2009. A report in 2010 said the Turkish mining industry had the highest death rate in the world per million tons of coal extracted – 5 times the figure for China, and 360 times that for the United States.

The deadliest mining disaster in history happened on 26 April, 1942 at Honkeiko in the Manchuria region of China, while it was under Japanese occupation. 1,549 miners perished after an explosion, and the Japanese were heavily criticised for closing down the ventilation system and sealing the pithead, condemning many of the victims to death by suffocation.

*Review of the Romanian edition of A Disastrous History of the World. http://www.gds.ro/Util%20si%20Placut/2014-05-05/Cele+mai+mari+dezastre+din+istoria+omenirii 

China - land of disasters

At least 400 people have been killed in an earthquake that has struck the remote area of Yushu in China’s western Qinghai province. The quake measured 6.9, compared with 7.0 in Haiti and 8.8 in Chile in February.

Nearly every building in the town of Jiegu is said to have been destroyed. Many Tibetans live in the area, and the relief effort is being hampered by landslides that have blocked roads.

China’s worst earthquake in recent years was the one that struck Sichuan in 2008 killing 87,000, but it is truly a country of disasters. Probably the deadliest earthquake the world has ever seen killed 830,000 people in Shaanxi province in 1556, while China also suffered the worst floods in history, with the Yellow River killing up to 2.5 million when it burst its banks in 1889, and the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers accounting for perhaps 3 million in 1931.

More than 1,540 miners perished in the world’s worst mining disaster at Honkeiko in 1942, while in the late 1870’s up to 13 million people died in one of the country's regular famines. The great hunger of 1959-61, hugely aggravated by Chairman Mao’s doctrinaire policies, brought a death toll of perhaps 40 million, while an estimated 36 million were killed in the An Lushan rebellion of the 8th century. For more details on all these stories, see A Disastrous History of the World.

(See also my blogs of Jan 10, Feb 22, March 27, May 11, July 28, Nov 19 and 23, 2009, Jan 15 and 22, Feb 9 and 15, 2010.)

Another Chinese mining disaster

The death toll in China’s latest mining disaster has now reached at least 104. Another four men are still missing after Saturday’s huge gas explosion at the Xinxing mine in Hegang close to the Russian border.

Apparently, attempts were being made to evacuate around 500 miners from the pit when the gas ignited. About a dozen women who went to the mine early today to complain about the lack of information, clashed with police and security guards, and some were driven away in a van. Reporters who tried to speak to the women were harassed.

Despite an 18% reduction in fatal accidents in the first half of this year, China’s coal mines remain among the most dangerous in the world. In the first six months of 2009, 1,175 miners have already been killed. Another 11 died yesterday in an explosion at another mine in Hunan province.

China was the scene of the world’s worst mining accident at Honkeiko in 1942, when 1,549 miners were killed. See also my blogs of Feb 22 and Nov 19.

Polio + Europe's worst mining disaster

There are small but ominous signs of polio making a comeback in Africa, aided by the chaos prevailing in parts of the continent. Refugees fleeing Somalia have brought the disease back to Kenya for the first time in 20 years, and Uganda has just had its first case in 12 years at a refugee camp, while Togo had three cases in 2008, after being clear of polio for five years.

A worldwide campaign against the virus reduced the number of cases from about 350,000 in 1988 to just 1,310 in 2007, but Bill Gates, who has pledged £185 million to the fight against the disease, says that if it is not eradicated, the number of victims will start rising again.

On this day....103 years ago, Europe’s worst ever mining disaster happened at the Courrieres colliery in northern France. About 1,800 men and boys were underground when a fierce explosion ripped through the pit. Rescue workers toiled day and night and managed to bring more than 650 men up, but eventually so many of the galleries collapsed that the search had to be called off.

Then astonishingly, 20 days after the disaster, a group of 13 miners emerged. They had survived by eating food taken down by colleagues who had been killed, and by slaughtering a horse. In the perpetual darkness, the group had lost all sense of time and believed they had been trapped for only four or five days.

The final death toll was 1,099 – a number surpassed only by the Honkeiko mining disaster of 1942 (see my blog of February 22).

Chinese mining disasters

At least 73 miners have been killed, and dozens more are trapped underground after an explosion at the Tunlan colliery in China’s main coal-producing province of Shanxi. More than 100 injured miners have been taken to hospital.

China is the world’s biggest producer of coal, with perhaps 5 million people working in the industry, but it also has the worst accident rate. Last year, the official death toll in the industry was 3,200, but many believe the true figure is much higher. In 2007, a Hongkong-based human rights organisation said it could be as many as 20,000.

The worst mining disaster in history happened in the Honkeiko colliery in the Chinese region of Manchuria in 1942, while it was occupied by the Japanese. An explosion killed more than 1,500 miners, about a third of those working in the pit at the time.