Guwahati: One miner was found dead on Wednesday in a flooded coal mine in Assam, India, after nine workers got trapped there. It’s an open cast mine in the Dima Hasao district of India which is 300 ft deep with underground tunnel systems. It is reported to have caused the disaster on Monday morning after the miners broke a water line, according to the officials and the state.
Rescue attempts for the trapped workers were threatened by the level of flood, but experienced divers continued the process early Wednesday and managed to recover one body. There was no way we could see the body – the car’s interior was very dark. One of the divers said, “We were holding it with our hands, and that’s how we had to avert,” local newspapers reported. Assam’s Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma posted the recovery update on X (formerly Twitter) and further mentioned that he is concerned about the ongoing rescue operation.
The construction mine in question has been frowned upon as being unlawful, a situation that has been common in the northeastern states of India, where mining goes on unabated, even under bans. Rat-hole mining, in which mines are barely big enough for a worker to fit through, was halted in 2014 because of abysmal mortality rates and environmental destruction. But, the unauthorized mining of minerals in the region continues.
“The Army has now joined the search and rescue operation at Panvel with divers, helicopters and engineers to support teams of NDRF. That is why it is difficult to determine the time of the operation, such as the presence of many rat holes in the mine,” said H.P.S. Kandhari, NDRF commandant.
This tragedy brings to mind another accident which occurred in 2019 when fifteen miners trapped in a rat-hole mine in Meghalaya were found dead; they were trapped by a flood from river water which flooded the mine. Operations are currently ongoing for the rescue in Assam; the process has various challenges, such as low light, a water-filled environment and the volatile nature of the mine.
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