Tanzania says 16 dead, 49 missing in flooded mine
01 Apr 2008 11:18:04 GMT
Source: Reuters
NAIROBI, April 1 (Reuters) - Sixteen miners have been confirmed dead and 49 others were feared killed in northern Tanzania after floods swept through a remote gemstone mine, a senior government official said on Tuesday. The privately owned mine in Mererani, the only place in the world where the violet-blue tanzanite gemstone is found, was hit by heavy rains on Saturday. Manyara Regional Commissioner Henry Shekifu said rescue workers had retrieved eight bodies and eight others were located in an inaccessible part of the mine. “Forty-nine more … are still unaccounted for,” Shekifu told Reuters by phone from the rescue scene. Officials had previously given conflicting figures for the total number of miners as some had failed to register before going underground.
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Latest news on the Tanzania mining disaster from AlertNet (Reuters)
MERERANI, Tanzania, March 31 (Reuters) - Hopes are slim of finding 66 miners trapped in gemstone pits that flooded in northern Tanzania over the weekend, a local legislator said on Monday.
Rescue workers have said they found several bodies on Sunday in the privately-owned mine in Mererani, which was flooded on Saturday after a heavy seasonal downpour. “We are still working to see how to rescue the bodies, because personally, I don’t think there’s hope of getting them alive,” Christopher Ole Sendeka, member of parliament for Simanjiro, told Reuters at the scene, adding that there were 66 people in the mine. Local media said on Monday that the government banned all mining activity in the area, the only place in the world where the violet-blue gemstone tanzanite is found, until the rescue operation is completed. A Reuters witness said the scene of the flooded mine smelled of decomposing bodies. Volunteer rescuers complained of lack of basic protective gear like face masks and gloves. “Yesterday when we went down, we reached a place where we found dead bodies rotting and the situation down there is really bad, our stomachs were swelling because of the smell,” Samuel Chacha, a mine worker, told Reuters. “We need help; there is no help here at all.” Ole Sendeka said the government was doing its best to bring in equipment and seek more help from a nearby mining company, Afgem. About 100 people stood at the scene while paramilitary officers patrolled the area. The government on Sunday put the number of those reported missing in the mine at 59, with 35 rescued and six bodies retrieved from the pits. Ole Sendeka said there were about 196 people originally in the pits. Local media said the discrepancy in the number of miners arose due to the fact that some miners had failed to register their names before going underground. Manyara Regional Commissioner Henry Shekifu said President Jakaya Kikwete was due to visit the site later in the day. Explosions and suffocation are common causes of death in Tanzania’s “wild north”, where small-scale independent miners dig remote gem fields in search of the violet-blue tanzanite, prized by jewellery-lovers in wealthy nations. In Tanzania’s worst mining disaster, about 70 people were killed in 1998 when heavy rains caused a mine to collapse. In 2002, at least 48 miners were suffocated when a compressor used to pump clean air into a gemstone mine malfunctioned. (Additional reporting by Antony Njuguna in Mererani and George Obulutsa in Nairobi) (Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Bryson Hull) <!– news ## for search indexer, do not remove –>
Several reports are coming in about a mining disaster in Tanzania.
Yahoo News 30-03-2008
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Hopes faded for 65 miners feared drowned in Tanzania on Sunday after floods raged through a remote gemstone mine near Mount Kilimanjaro.
Manyara Regional Commissioner Henry Shekifu told Reuters six bodies had been recovered so far and that 59 workers were missing after the disaster near northern Mererani town. Thirty-five people had been rescued.
“That’s the latest information we have this morning,” Shekifu said by telephone from the scene. He said the floods swept into eight pits early on Saturday, drowning miners.
Volunteers had rushed to the scene and the government said it was bringing equipment to drain the water as fast as possible. But electricity poles were brought down by the flash floods, and engineers were battling to restore power.
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BBC NEWS 29-03-2008 12.25
About 75 miners are feared dead after rainfall triggered the collapse of mines in Tanzania, the government says.
Seven bodies have so far been recovered in the Mererani region, about 40km (25 miles) south-east of Arusha in north-eastern Tanzania.
Rescuers say the flooding is hampering their efforts and there is little hope of finding anyone else alive.
The area mines Tanzanite, a valuable blue gemstone found only in a small area near Arusha.
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