SAVASTEPE, Turkey – Miner Erdal Bicak believes he knows why so many of his colleagues died in Turkey’s worst mining disaster: company negligence.
And he knows one other thing – he’s never going back down any mine again.
Bicak had just ended his shift Tuesday and was making his way to the surface when managers ordered him to retreat because of a problem in the Soma coal mine in western Turkey. Workers gathered in one area to hastily put on gas masks.
“The company is guilty,” he told The Associated Press, adding that managers had machines that measure methane gas levels. “The new gas levels had gotten too high, and they didn’t tell us in time.”
The miner also said government safety inspectors never visited the lower reaches of the Soma mine and have no idea of how bad conditions get.
Government and mining officials have insisted, however, that the disaster that killed 301 workers was not due to negligence, and the mine was inspected regularly.
Akin Celik, the Soma mine’s operations manager, has said thick smoke from the underground fire killed many miners who had no gas masks. High levels of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been a problem for rescue workers as well.
Bicak, whose leg was badly injured and in a cast, recounted his miraculous escape late Friday while at a candlelight vigil for Soma victims in the town square of nearby Savastepe.
Recalling his ordeal, he said he ended up about a kilometer underground with 150 people Tuesday afternoon when he heard an explosion. He said they were given old oxygen masks that he thought hadn’t been checked in many years.
He and a close friend tried to make their way to an exit, but the smoke was thick. The path was narrow and steep, with ceilings so low the miners couldn’t stand up, making it difficult to leave quickly. He and his friend took turns slapping each other to stay conscious.
“I told my friend ‘I can’t go on. Leave me here. I’m going to die,’” Bicak said. But his friend said to him, “No, we’re getting out of here.”
Bicak eventually made it out of the mine with his friend – by then lapsing in and out of consciousness. He said he lost many friends and out of the 150 miners he was working with, only 15 made it out alive.
Company officials have claimed safety standards were high, there were gas sensors at “50 locations,” and all employees were provided gas masks.
“We have brought (the mine) to the level of one of the most advanced mines in Turkey regarding safety,” Alp Gurkan, chairman of Soma Holding, told reporters Friday at a news conference in Soma.
Bicak said the last inspection at the Soma mine was six months ago. He said mine managers know that government inspectors only visit the top 100 meters of the mine, so they just clean up that part and the inspectors never see the narrow, steep, cramped sections below.
Mine owners are tipped off up to a week before an inspection, said Ozgur Ozel, an opposition lawmaker from the Soma region who has criticized the government for not adopting the International Labor Organization’s convention on mine safety.
