Tragedy in Sardinata shows negligence in mines inspection

In July, last year, a similar situation happened in Amagá (Antioquia), where 73 miners died due to an explosion in the coal mine San Fernando.

"This means that the inspections to these mines are not being carried out properly," asserted Luis José Mejía, a professor of the Department of Geoscience at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, "and tragedies like this can be prevented with a periodic gas regulation."

The accumulation of methane gas is a potential explosive. According to Mejía, the Ministry of Mines and Energy has very clear regulations to control the situation; however, the mine owner does not comply with them.

Another aspect that the expert mentioned was that nobody wants to be responsible for the tragedies, since it is usual for the owner to blame the engineer, this one blames the supervisor, and so on.

In this country, the authority that regulates the state of the mines is the Ministry; however, the auditing is made by the Colombian Institute of Geology (Ingeominas, for its acronym in Spanish).

According to figures given by this institute, during 2010 173 casualties were the result of accidents in different mines in the country and, in the same year, 84 emergencies were reported.