(25 Feb 2021) A collapsed illegal gold mine in Indonesia's Sulawesi island buried dozens of people as gruelling search and rescue effort retrieved three bodies of female miners and saved 15 people from the debris, officials said Thursday.
Survivors estimated about 23 people were still trapped in the rubble of the mining pit in Parigi Moutong district of Central Sulawesi province after makeshift wooden structures in the mine collapsed late Wednesday due to unstable soil, burying people in the mine pit, said Andrias Hendrik Johannes, who heads local search and rescue agency.
He said police, emergency personnel, military and volunteers were all taking part in the rescue effort but the remote locale complicated the operation.
Johannes said that unstable soil conditions that could lead to new landslides are hampering the search of five other people still missing, including a woman.
Emergency personnel used two excavators and farm tools to search for the victims.
Video showed rescuers struggling to bring out a body bag from a ravine inundated by water.
Informal mining operations are commonplace in Indonesia, providing a tenuous livelihood to thousands who labour in conditions with a high risk of serious injury or death.
Indonesia accounts for about 3 percent of the world's gold production.
Most of that comes from the Grasberg mine in Papua province, said to be the world's largest gold mine with $40 billion in reserves and up to 20,000 workers.
But small artisanal, often unauthorized mining is on the rise in many parts of Asia and Africa: a study by a task force, the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development found the number of people engaged in such mining had risen to over 40 million, up from 30 million in 2014 and 6 million in 1993.
Landslides, flooding and collapses of tunnels are just some of the hazards in such mining. Much of the processing of gold ore involves use of highly toxic mercury and cyanide by workers using little or no protection.
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