“Unpredictable“, although with some communication failure which, in principle, is not related to the accident. These are the conclusions of the report prepared by ICL Iberiathe owner of the potash mine in Súria (Bages) in which on March 9 they died in an accident three geologists around 7:35 in the morning after a 1.9-tonne part of the roof of the gallery in which they were standing fell on them.
According to the company’s analysis, written by a committee made up of technicians and worker representatives and sent to the General Directorate of Mines of the Generalitat, the incident was “unpredictable”. And this is so due to the experience and knowledge of the professionals affected, the assessment of the technicians who studied the accident and the experience of workers who have analyzed it. There was “no sign that the ceiling was going to fall,” according to the group’s CEO, Patrick Chacana.
In any case, the analysis recognizes that the night team, which ends its shift around 6:30 in the morning, included in a report that a part of the roof on the opposite side, about six meters from where the accident occurred it was not in good condition and another area about twenty feet away had a thinner pillar. The company admits that this information did not reach the geologists, so it admits some communication failure. But, in the opinion of those who have made the report, all this “has no causal relationship” with the accident.
Chacana explained that one of the deductions from the study is that the three deceased were away from the roof, which was in worse condition and analyzing the issue and “avoiding a possible unstable point.” And suddenly a part of the roof fell that no one had foreseen. A rock 5.8 meters long by 2.6 wide and 40 centimeters thick that crushed them.
The work to rescue the bodies lasted more than seven hours to prioritize safety, he explained. Oscar Molina and Victorian Pinedaaged 28 and 29, were master’s students at the UPC School of Engineering in Manresa, while Daniel Alvareza Colombian national, 31, was doing a doctorate in Geology at the University of Barcelona (UB).
daily control
The CEO of ICL Iberia affirms that the control work they carried out is done daily. “We mine between 30 and 40 kilometers and each daily progress is analyzed”, he has detailed. Of the three deceased, Óscar Molina was the one with the most experience, with more than five years and with some 1,000 evaluations a year.
The accident has prompted ICL to strengthen the research and implementation of technology to reduce human exposure and maintains its commitment to security, added Chacana. As an example, he has detailed that 10 years ago 25,000 bolts were put in per year (bolts that hold the roof) and last year there were 250,000.
He has also ensured that they allocate some 9 million euros just for that purpose for this type of mining, which has unique characteristics. It is a corrugated potash mine, unlike the flat ones that exist in Russia, Belarus or Canada, according to Chacana. And that requires much more security control to be between a fault and the Pyrenees. The group has had since 2017, he stated, a team specialized in rock mechanics with 12 people.
closed gallery
The affected gallery has been closed. Activity in the mine was halted for five days, until the funeral of the injured. Then the work began “gradually and with conversations in the different teams.” In fact, more than 100 psychological cares had to be covered through the mutual Fremap.
The case is in a Manresa court. On the day of the accident, at first, the rescue services of the same company came, but later the Fire Department and the Mossos d’Esquadra were incorporated. Two mine inspectors also entered the premises to also carry out a report. The Minister for Business, Roger Torrent, explained on the day of the incident that the ICL mine was subjected to periodic inspections by technicians from the Department of Business and that the last one, which had been carried out the month before, was it ended “without any open file”.
The company promised to also launch an internal investigation, which is the one that has given details on Tuesday.
potash mine of súria is dedicated to the extraction of potash and is owned ICL Iberia Suria & Sallent, the only company that produces potassium salts in Spain and belongs to the Israeli firm ICL. Its workforce exceeds 1,000 workers.
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Located in one of the one of the most important potash reserves in Western Europe, in 2021 it inaugurated an access ramp whose construction, after many vicissitudes, lasted almost a decade. the ramp more than five kilometers inside the mountain reaches the 900 meters deepthe place where the accident occurred. This ramp formed part of an industrial plan amounting to about 500 million euroswhich led to the closure of the company’s facilities in the neighboring town of Sallent, also in the Bages region.
These facilities in Súria experienced another accident in 2013, when two workers died in the Les Cabanasses. A tile from the roof of the gallery fell on top of them. The company halted activity in the Súria and Sallent mines until after the burial of the workers, who were 37 and 49 years old. Last month’s accident was the most serious since 1986, when three miners also lost the mine when they were buried.