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. The company is guilty,” Mr Bicak said, 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,” he added.
Another miner, Emre Alaca said that he and his colleagues had given up hope as they were trapped in a room 50 metres square, trapped two kilometres underground with more than 140 people. When the explosion happened at 3.10 pm, Mr Alaca was trapped with fire between him and the exit. “There was nowhere to go,” Mr Alaca, 30, said. “If you go one way you get smoke, and the other way was the same,” he added. Mr Alaca’s experience was different.
All the miners carry gas masks, but he didn’t have his. “I knew they were old and don’t work. They are supposed to be checked at regular intervals but they are not,” he said. Nearby was a machinery room which had clean air thanks to pumps used to power it. The group lasted in the room for two hours. Then the men adopted an old technique. “There was an engineer with us,” Mr Alaca said, “he told us to bite the iron structures. If you hold your nose and bite the iron, it delivers oxygen to the brain,” Mr Alaca added.
