Myanmar landslide kills at least 162
Print Edition
A LANDSLIDE at a jade mine in northern Myanmar killed at least 162 people, with more feared dead, authorities said yesterday, after a heap of mining waste collapsed into a lake, triggering a wave of mud and water that buried many workers.
The miners were collecting stones in the jade-rich Hpakant area of Kachin state when the “muddy wave” crashed onto them, after heavy rain, the fire service department said in a Facebook post. Rescue workers recovered 162 bodies, the department said, but more were missing.
“Other bodies are in the mud,” Tar Lin Maung, a local official with the information ministry, told Reuters by phone. “The numbers are going to rise.”
The fire service said 54 injured people were taken to hospitals. The tolls announced by other state agencies and media lagged behind the fire agency, which was most closely involved. An unknown number of people are feared missing.
The Hpakant area is 950 kilometers north of Myanmar’s biggest city, Yangon, and is the center of the world’s biggest and most lucrative jade mining industry.
Deadly landslides and other accidents are common in the poorly regulated mines of Hpakant, which draw impoverished workers from across Myanmar, but this is the worst in more than five years.
About 100 people were killed in a collapse in 2015, which strengthened calls to regulate the industry. In that case, the victims died when a 60-meter-high mountain of earth and waste discarded by several mines tumbled in the middle of the night, enveloping more than 70 huts below in which the miners slept.
The victims of such accidents are usually freelance miners who settle near giant mounds of discarded earth that has been excavated by heavy machinery.
The freelancers who scavenge for bits of jade usually work and live at the base of the mounds of earth, which become particularly unstable during the rainy season.
Most scavengers are unregistered migrants from other areas, making it hard to determine exactly how many people are actually missing after such accidents and in many cases leaving the relatives of the dead in their home villages unaware of their fate.
Video footage on social media showed frantic miners racing uphill to escape as a towering pile of black waste cascaded into a turquoise lake, churning up a tsunami-like wave of mud.
Photos showed rows of dead bodies laid out on a hill, covered by tarpaulin.
People stuck in mud
Maung Khaing, a 38-year-old miner from the area who witnessed the accident, said he was about to take a picture of the precarious waste mound that looked set to collapse when people began shouting “run, run!”
“Within a minute, all the people at the bottom (of the hill) just disappeared,” he told Reuters by phone. “I feel empty in my heart. I still have goose bumps ... There were people stuck in the mud shouting for help but no one could help them.”
Than Hlaing, a member of a local civil society group helping in the aftermath of the disaster, said those killed were freelancers scavenging the waste left by a larger mining company.
The mine where the accident happened belongs to the Yadanar Kyay company, according to the military’s official news site.
The government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi pledged to clean up the industry when it took power in 2016, but activists say little has changed.
Official sales of jade in Myanmar were worth 671 million euros (US$750 million) in 2016-17, according to data published by the government as part of an Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. But experts believe the true value of the industry is much larger.
Than Hlaing said a local official had warned people not to go to the mine because of the bad weather.
“There’s no hope for the families to get compensation as they were freelance miners,” she said, “I don’t see any route to escape this kind of cycle. People take risks, go into landfills, as they have no choice.”
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
