162 KILLED IN MYANMAR JADE MINE LANDSLIDE
Scores of workers smothered by a wave of mud, says Fire Dept
THE battered bodies of more than 160 jade miners were pulled from a sea of mud after a landslide in northern Myanmar yesterday, after one of the worst-ever accidents to hit the treacherous industry.
Scores die each year while working in the country’s lucrative but poorly regulated jade trade, which uses low-paid migrant workers to scrape out a gem highly coveted in China.
The disaster struck after heavy rainfall pounded the open-cast mines, close to the Chinese border in Kachin State, where billions of dollars of jade is believed to be scoured each year from bare hillsides. A slice of mountain collapsed, sending a churning torrent of mud into an aqua marine coloured lake of mine wastewater as workers scampered up hill.
“There are so many people floating in the water,” said a bystander.
Dozens “were smothered by a wave of mud”, the Myanmar Fire Services Department said in a Facebook post. Rescue workers worked throughout the day to pull bodies out of a mud lake under a deluge of heavy rain.
“By 7.15pm, 162 bodies were found,” said the department, adding that 54 people were injured and sent to hospitals.
Mud-slaked and bloodied bodies of miners were laid out in grim rows under tarpaulins, some missing shoes as a result of the force of the wall of mud which hit them. A woman grieved over the recovered victims, as rescue workers held her up.
Working through a torrent of heavy rain was a challenge, police superintendent Than Win Aung said, as it could spark another collapse on the unstable terrain.
“We can’t dig and find the bodies buried underwater... so we are just picking up the dead bodies that float,” he said.
The victims had apparently defied a warning not to work the mines during the monsoon rains, local police said. The United Nations in Myanmar said it was “deeply saddened by the terrible loss of life”.