At least four miners have died and 19 remain missing after several explosions in coal mines in the town of Sutatausa, in the department of Cundinamarca, in central Colombia, official sources reported on Wednesday.
The explosions occurred on Tuesday night in the El Cajón area, where dozens of miners were working in several underground galleries from which coal is extracted manually, authorities have explained.
@RCUNDINAMARCA reports the explosion of three mines in Sutatausa.
So far we have information on two people trapped in the mine.
Seven miners have already made it out.
Given the magnitude, we activated a support team of Cogua, Gachancipá and Chocontá firefighters.
– Nicolas Garcia Bustos (@nicolasgarciab) March 15, 2023
“The last report we have, at 5:20 in the morning, on the situation that occurred in a mine in the municipality of Sutatausa, in the village of El Cajón, is of two people recovered alive, four bodies recovered deceased and 17 people who they are still trapped in the mines”, the governor of Cundinamarca, Nicolás García, said at first.
Lifeguards from the National Mining Agency (ANM), firefighters, the Red Cross, Civil Defense and other organizations continue to rescue the municipality, located about two hours north of Bogotá.
The captain of the Cundinamarca Fire Department, Álvaro Farfán, explained that the first explosion was caused by an accumulation of gases, causing "a chain reaction" that affected four other mines, according to local media reports.
“These mines were full of methane gas and also coal dust.
These five mines are connected to each other and there was a chain reaction.
The explosion of a mine is generated and later the other four ”, he explained.
“There were 30 miners, seven of them managed to get out by their own means, but unfortunately we have four victims.
We are still looking for 19 people”, said Captain Farfán.
Later, the emergency teams managed to rescue one more person.
In the department of Cundinamarca and neighboring Boyacá there are hundreds of coal mines in which thousands of miners work, not always with the necessary safety conditions, which has caused several accidents with fatalities over the last decades.
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