|
 In the third such accident this year, a 3.5-magnitude earthquake
on Thursday near the central Bosnian town of Zenica caused rocks in
the mine to fracture explosively, sealing off the miners in an
underground passage.
Twenty-nine miners were pulled out alive within the first 24 hours
and the bodies of four of the dead were recovered on Saturday.
After digging for 80 hours through tight underground corridors
filled with methane, emergency teams on Sunday night reached the
body of the last miner who was buried under piles of earth, said
mine manager Esad Civic.
A joint prayer for the five men and the burial will be held later on
Monday in Zenica. A day of national mourning was declared in
Bosnia's autonomous Bosniak-Croat Federation, where the mine is
located.
Nuraga Duranovic, the Federation chief mining inspector, said the
miners most probably suffocated from poisonous gases released in the
air after the rock burst.
Sixteen people have been injured in previous accidents this year,
and experts say that Raspotocje is the most dangerous of all
Bosnia's coal mines because of frequent rock bursts caused by
tremors at its deep underground pits. Thirty nine miners died in a
rock burst at the mine in 1982.
Raspotocje produces coal for Bosnia's largest power utility,
EPBiH <JPES.SJ>, and employs 430 miners.
The mine had been among the best equipped in the region before the
collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, but was damaged by shelling in
the Bosnian war and has not been substantially upgraded since.
[to top of second column] |
In 2009, the Federation government merged seven coal mines,
including Raspotocje, with EPBiH to supply its coal-fired plants,
and the utility pledged to invest more than 200 million Bosnian
marka ($135 million) over five years to improve working conditions.
It has so far spent 140 million marka, but Raspotocje has seen
little of that.
Some of the miners who survived the Thursday's accident have said
they would not return to work.
Civic said that management and trade union would request additional
funding and investment from EPBiH to improve the work conditions and
safety of miners at Raspotocje.
(This story has been refiled to removes extra characters in seventh
paragraph)
(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Toby Chopra)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
