October 25, 2024
In one of Iran’s worst mine disasters ever, a total of 51 men died September 21 as the result of methane gas at a coal mine near Tabas. A local news report said all the dead were suffocated when methane cut off their oxygen and none died from the collapse of mine walls when the methane gas exploded.
Most of the dead were believed to have died from suffocation before the explosion of the methane gas. Rescuers got to 16 injured miners quickly and pulled them to safety. But as they dug deeper into the mine shaft, every miner they came across was dead. And two of the 16 injured eventually died.
The rescue effort was finally ended after 84 hours. The mine company said after so much time had passed it assumed no one else could have survived, implying that not all 51 men were recovered from the mine. But it did not say how many bodies remained in the mine. Saeed Samadi, secretary of the coal association, told local media that coalmines in Iran generally suffer from inadequate equipment and he criticized the government for not allocating any funds for mine safety since last year.
The mine where the explosion occurred is privately-owned by the Madanjoo Co. and Samadi said mine management there operated under high standards, importing top quality equipment. He said the mine had not received a safety warning from inspectors in the past 20 years. He said one of the dead was the mine’s safety manager. A week after the disaster, the company announced that its CEO, Mohammad Mojtahedzadeh, had been rushed to a hospital after suffering a stroke.
The methane explosion occurred at 9 p.m. local time. Javad Ghenatzadeh, governor general of South Khorasan province, one of the country’s poorest, said rescuers were challenged by the depth at which the methane explosion occurred. “The reality is that it is difficult to rescue the injured from a depth of 700 meters (2,300 feet) diagonally and 250 meters (820 feet) vertically underground,” he said.
The deadliest mine disaster in world history was recorded after a coal dust explosion in Benxi, Liaoning, China on April 26, 1942. It killed 1,549 workers. The majority of the victims were Chinese forced laborers working in a mine under Japanese management during World War II. The five deadliest mining disasters in history were all in China or Japan. Each had death totals exceeding 800.
