Mining accident in Jiu Valley

Thursday's mining accident in Lupeni, in the Jiu Valley has brought back in the public eye the working conditions of miners in this area

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Roxana Vasile, 06.10.2017, 13:44

Each time mining accidents occur in Romania, the entire country comes to a standstill and watches breathlessly on TV the rescue operations, hoping that no victims will be announced. Unfortunately, on Thursday, a mining gallery collapsed at the coal mine in Lupeni, in the Jiu Valley, killing one miner and wounding another two, out of a team of 11. The rescue operations lasted for 15 hours and the rescuers worked in very difficult conditions, as the area was highly unstable because of the rocks. Ambulances and helicopters of the emergency rescue service SMURD arrived at the site.

The members of the three miners families and their colleagues, who were eagerly waiting for news from the underground, were joined by the Energy Minister Toma Petcu. The latter announced several investigations were started and a criminal file was opened in relation to this work accident, in an attempt to establish the causes of the event and to identify possible guilt. Toma Petcu:

“We expect the Territorial Work Inspectorate and the Prosecutors Office to come up with the results of their investigations. Well conduct our own investigation and will make public the results only after the two aforementioned bodies have announced their own results.”

One of the miners wives complained about the very low salaries of this professional category, miners being faced with big dangers when going in the underground galleries. Admitting that mining is a job involving lots of risks, the father of a miner who participated in the rescue operations said that Romanian miners were working in awful conditions, worse than those in which slaves had once worked.

Trade unionists, in their turn, blame the lack of labor safety and criticize the deplorable state of the galleries as well as the old equipment and installations used in the mining process. They also blame the current situation in Lupeni on the plan to close down the coalface where the collapse occurred, the Lupeni mine being one of the two unprofitable mining exploitations in the Jiu Valley scheduled to be shut down by the end of 2018. In the past 10 years, several plans to close down mining exploitations in the Jiu Valley have been launched but have never been completed, leading to a record number of serious mining accidents caused by gallery collapses or underground explosions.

As to the history of the Jiu Valley mining area, for more than 150 years since the opening of the first mining exploitation in 1859 in Petrila, billions of tons of coal have been extracted.

(Translated by Lacramioara Simion)