S. Africa gas leak leaves 17 dead
Illegal processing of gold blamed
BOKSBURG, South Africa — The death toll from a toxic gas leak that authorities blamed on an illegal gold processing operation in South Africa rose to 17, including three children, as police removed canisters from a community of closely packed shacks and sifted through evidence Thursday.
The leak of what authorities said was a toxic nitrate gas occurred Wednesday night in the informal Angelo settlement in Boksburg, a city on the eastern outskirts of Johannesburg.
The three children who died were ages 1, 6, and 15, police said. At least 10 people were hospitalized, including a 2month-old baby, two 4 year olds and a 9 year old, Panyaza Lesufi, the premier of Gauteng province, said Thursday.
A statement from the office of President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa said it was a “devastating and tragic loss of innocent lives.”
Bodies remained on the ground, some of them covered in sheets or blankets, for hours after the leak was reported around 8 p.m. Wednesday as emergency service responders waited for forensic investigators and pathologists to do their work.
“It’s not a nice scene at all,” Lesufi said. “It’s painful, emotionally draining, and tragic.”
An Associated Press journalist saw a forensic investigator covering the body of a small child with a blanket. Another body, covered in a white cloth with a shoe sticking out, lay under a strip of yellow police tape cordoning off the area. The bodies eventually were removed.
Search teams combed the area deep into the night, looking for other possible casualties.
Authorities didn’t say if the people engaged in the illegal gold processing thought to have caused the gas leak were among the dead, but police opened a criminal case.
Investigators made their way through narrow alleys between shacks and other makeshift homes that were dark due to a lack of streetlights, a common situation in the deeply impoverished informal settlements found in and around South Africa’s cities.
Emergency services spokesman William Ntladi said the deaths were caused by the inhalation of nitrate gas that leaked from a gas cylinder being kept in a shack where the miners were separating gold from rock and dirt. He said the leak had emptied the canister.
Lesufi tweeted videos that showed the dusty inside of the shack and at least four gas cylinders on metal stands. The footage included what Lesufi said was the cylinder that leaked lying on the floor next to the shack’s entrance.