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They retrieved three more bodies late Friday, and another worker
died in hospital, bringing the death toll to 14, said the
National Search and Rescue Agency in a statement. Five people
have been hospitalized with serious injuries.
Local television reports showed emergency personnel, along with
police, soldiers and volunteers digging desperately in the
quarry in a steep limestone cliff, supported by five excavators,
early Saturday.
Authorities said six to eight people are still believed to be
trapped.
The cause of the collapse is still under investigation, and
police have been questioning six people including the owner of
the quarry, said local police chief Sumarni.
West Java Governor Dedi Mulyadi said in a video statement on
Instagram that he visited the quarry before he was elected in
February and considered it dangerous.
“It did not meet the safety standard elements for its workers,”
Mulyadi said, adding that at that time, “I didn’t have any
capacity to stop it.”
On Friday, Mulyadi said that he had ordered the quarry shut, as
well as four other similar sites in West Java.
Illegal or informal resource extraction operations are common in
Indonesia, providing a tenuous livelihood to those who labor in
conditions with a high risk of injury or death.
Landslides, flooding and tunnel collapses are just some of the
hazards associated with them. Much of the processing of sand,
rocks or gold ore also involves the use of highly toxic mercury
and cyanide by workers using little or no protection.
Last year, a landslide triggered by torrential rains struck an
unauthorized gold mining operation on Indonesia’s Sumatra
island, killing at least 15 people.
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