Last bodies recovered in Colombian mine collapse that killed 15

On Monday, Colombian authorities announced that emergency workers had recovered the last bodies of the miners trapped and killed in a collapsed gold mine in the town of Riosucio, in Colombia’s Caldas department. UNGRD, the Colombian government’s disaster relief agency, said in a statement, “After 12 days of working around the clock... the bodies of the 15 miners who were trapped in the El Tunel gold mine when it was suddenly flooded... have now been recovered.”

The mine collapse happened on May 13 and was triggered by a power outage that shut off the mine’s pumps and allowed it to be flooded by the nearby Cauca river. The local authorities asserted that they would investigate the causes of the accident. The Colombian government confirmed that all of the dead miners were men, and that the UNGRD was providing counseling to the men’s families.

In follow-up reporting to the tragedy, Colombian daily El Espectador spoke with Jorge Martín Molina Escobar, a Geosciences and Environment professor at the National University’s Medellin campus. Molina Escobar warned that, “With the way things are, we should expect mining accidents on average every three months.” He explained that this is because Colombia has a large artisanal, and often illegal, mining industry, and 66% of all mining accidents occur in artisanal mines. Though the National Mining Agency has made considerable strides in regulating the artisanal mining industry, the more than 10,000 mines in the country make it impossible to completely avoid these types of tragedies.

In related news, the Colombian Ministry of Mines and Energy is continuing its efforts to formalize the country’s artisanal mining sector and on Monday announced a mining formalization plan for the Colombian departments of Santander, Cauca, Cundinamarca, Guajira, Valle del Cauca, Boyacá, and Tolima. The implementation of the plan will carry a budget of more than $11 million.