Rescuers at a collapsed Indonesian gold mine yesterday brought in a heavy excavator to the perilous site as they ramped up efforts to reach more than 30 miners still trapped underground.
Search teams had been forced to use spades and even bare hands following the collapse at the remote site on Sulawesi Island that has killed at least eight people, fearing that a wrong move involving heavy equipment could make the situation worse.
However, three days after the Tuesday night collapse, authorities said they had decided to use an excavator to haul away debris, as they try to get food and water to the miners believed to still be alive.
Photo: AFP
“We were afraid to use it because it might trigger another landslide or send debris tumbling onto the trapped miners,” local disaster official Abdul Muin Paputungan said.
“But now we’ve got the permission from their family members to use it, despite the risks,” he added.
More than three dozen people are believed to be trapped at the mine.
Rescuers have communicated with a handful of victims who have cried for help from the depths of the mine.
The disaster agency said that the death toll rose to eight yesterday, but offered no details on the latest victim.
A miner died of blood loss on Thursday after his leg, pinned under rock, was amputated at the scene.
Army and disaster agency personnel have relied on ropes to navigate the steep, muddy area as survivors were carried away in makeshift stretchers to waiting vehicles.
About 20 people have been hauled out of the mine alive since the accident, including the amputee who later died.
Victims have been treated for cuts and broken bones at a local hospital in the Bolaang Mongondow region of North Sulawesi Province, where five miners were killed in December last year after an illegal gold mine accident.
The mineral-rich nation has scores of unlicensed mining sites and safety regulations are routinely flouted. This week’s accident happened when support beams at the unlicensed site collapsed, the disaster agency said.
The Bolivian government on Friday struck a deal with protesting miners, but was still grappling with blockades and demonstrations by other workers across La Paz. Other groups are still blocking access roads into the city, which is also the seat of the government. Police on Thursday prevented the miners from entering the main square by using tear gas, while the demonstrators hurled stones and explosives with slingshots. Protests against the policies of Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz have convulsed the Andean nation since early this month, and roadblocks were choking routes into La Paz throughout Friday, the national road authority said. Miners demanded that Paz
The Philippines said it has asked the country’s Supreme Court to allow it to arrest former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s chief drug war enforcer to stand trial in an international tribunal. The International Criminal Court (ICC) last week unsealed an arrest warrant against Philippine Senator Ronald dela Rosa, accusing him along with Duterte and other “coperpetrators” of the “crime against humanity of murder.” Dela Rosa briefly sought refuge in the Philippine Senate last week while asking the Philippine Supreme Court to stop an ongoing attempt by government agents to arrest him. “By his own conduct, he has placed himself outside the protection of
A ship anchored off the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was seized and taken toward Iran and another — a cargo ship near Oman — sank after being attacked, authorities said on Thursday, as tensions escalated near the Strait of Hormuz. It was not immediately clear who was behind these incidents, but they happened as a senior Iranian official reiterated his country’s claim of control over the waterway and another said it had a right to seize oil tankers connected to the US. The turmoil in the strait has been a sticking point for weeks in talks between the US and Iran to
The researchers in Ireland looked at their computer screen, marveling at a medieval book tracked down in a Roman library. They flipped through its digitized pages and found their sought-after treasure: the oldest surviving English poem. “We were extremely surprised. We were speechless. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we first saw that,” said Elisabetta Magnanti, a visiting research fellow at Trinity College Dublin’s school of English. The poem was also within the main body of Latin text, she said, calling it “extraordinary.” Composed in Old English by a Northumbrian agricultural worker in the 7th century, Caedmon’s Hymn appears within some copies of
RSS