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21 September, 2009
The ICEM extends its condolences to the families of miners killed and injured in a deadly Polish mine explosion on Friday, 18 September, as well as to all mining unions representing workers at the Katowicki Holding Weglowy (KHW) company.
A methane gas explosion followed by a fire at KHW’s Wujek-Slask mine in the coal-dominated Silesa region of southwestern Poland killed 13, and seriously injured 18 other miners with severe burns. A total of 40 miners were hospitalized following the explosion.
The deadly blast and fire, Poland’s second worst in recent years, ripped through mine shafts 1,050 metres underground at mid-morning on Friday near the town of Ruda Slaska.
The Polish government has declared today and Tuesday, 22 September, a two-day national period of mourning due to the horrible workplace tragedy.
A Polish website, Pracownik, reported that a miner at the Wujek-Slask colliery made a video last April, showing methane measurements over four times the levels that are considered safe from such an accident occurring. The video was aired on a Polish TV station late Friday.
Mine-safety activists in Poland hinted that any investigation must centre on whether or not methane reading instruments inside shafts had been tampered with in order to boost production.
State-run KHW had merged the Wujek and Slash collieries in 2004 into a single enterprise in order to save costs. In November 2006, 23 miners perished in another Ruda Slaska mine called Halemba, owned by the state-operated Kampania Weglowa (KW). This was the worst Polish mine tragedy in three decades. The Halemba mine had been idled for eight months then, and the company had sent workers 1,000 metres below the surface to retrieve equipment when the blast occurred.