Turkish Mine Rescue Hampered by Fire, Toll at 238
By Selcan Hacaoglu May 14, 2014 11:07 AM ET
Turkish rescue workers battled flames and methane gas to try to save dozens of miners still trapped underground after a fire in a coal shaft claimed at least 238 lives in what threatens to become the country’s worst mining disaster.
About 120 workers were thought to remain in the mine in the western town of Soma, said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who visited the site today. Earlier in the day, Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said, “Our hopes are fading,” and warned that casualties were likely to rise because the blaze hadn’t been extinguished.
As anguished relatives waited outside the mine for news, health-care officials used loudspeakers to announce the rescue of injured miners and provide details on their hospital transfer, NTV television footage from the area showed.
“Everyone should be assured that this accident will be investigated to the smallest detail,” Erdogan said, adding that a three-day national mourning period was declared beginning yesterday. “We won’t allow any negligence to be ignored. We will get to the bottom of the incident and take steps to satisfy the public.”
The death toll is heading “toward the highest loss of workers’ life in an accident in Turkey,” Yildiz said. The country’s worst mining accident took place in 1992, when 263 miners were killed in a gas explosion in Kozlu in the northwest.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-13/turkey-says-20-miners-dead-hundreds-trapped-after-fire.html
