Wednesday March 15, 2023 | 9:38 p.m.
At least eleven people died and ten are trapped after an explosion inside a coal mine tunnel in central Colombia, the governor of the Cundinamarca department reported.
The incident occurred in the municipality of Sutatausa due to the “accumulation” of gases” that exploded by “a spark generated by a pickaxe” from a worker, said Governor Nicolás García.
“There are 11 people found dead and we are still in the search and rescue of the ten that remain,” he added, according to the AFP news agency.
The explosion occurred on Tuesday night in six legal mines “that communicate with each other” and the trapped miners are 900 meters deep, which makes it difficult for the hundreds of rescuers who work with picks to search, according to García.
“Every minute that passes is less oxygen time” and it is “quite difficult” to find them alive, lamented the governor.
Images shared in local media show firefighters and workers from the disaster care authority operating at the entrances to the mines, while a group of people have been waiting since dawn for information about their relatives.
Mining tragedies are frequent in Colombia, especially in illegal tunnels in Cundinamarca and other departments in the center of the country.
“It is an accumulation of gases, as we know these mines were filled with methane gas inside, in addition to this, there is coal dust, this, in addition to being toxic, is highly explosive and obviously this caused this emergency to occur as such. ”, commented the fire captain Álvaro Farfán in an interview.
