The multinational that owns the Súria potash mine claims that the tragedy that ended the lives of three young geologists at the beginning of March was the result of an unforeseeable accident. Sources from ICL Iberia wanted to comment yesterday on some of the main conclusions contained in the report that the same company has just sent to the Generalitat.
Unpredictable, yes, pretty much a product of bad luck, they suggested at some point. In the mine, miners tend to say, you know when you enter it, but… Both technicians and representatives of the company’s workers participated in the preparation of this document. It is most likely that the Generalitat itself will soon transfer him to the court in charge of the investigations still underway into these three deaths.
The director of ICL Iberia, Patricio Chacana; the head of geologists of the company, Carlos Saavedra, and the head of institutional and legal relations, Luis RodrÃguez, recalled that the three dead technicians were widely qualified to carry out the tasks in question, that the jobs they were carrying out term had already been carried out on many other occasions, that the operation strictly complied with the corresponding security protocols… “They were experienced people with superior training and there was no sign that the ceiling wall, in the point of detachment, it was unstable”.
In fact, continued the representatives of the company, the detachment took place when the three geologists had already finished their tasks and were conversing in a circle before leaving the site. Then, at about half past eight in the morning, at a depth of about 855 meters, a 1.9-tonne diamond-shaped part of the roof, about five meters long and about 40 centimeters thick, collapsed on them .
In a way, the disaster was very localized. Technicians were assessing the safety conditions at the site. Everything points to the fact that they decided to stop at that point because beyond that, the roof, about nine meters away, did not seem completely stable.
A few hours after the accident, some miners from this operation pointed out that the night shift workers had detected these circumstances there. The company, despite this, understands, and apparently includes it in its report, as its representatives assured yesterday, that no causal relationship can be established between the two events, that in principle the inconsistencies detected further from the scene they did not trigger the detachment that ended the life of the geologists.
In any case, the representatives of the company acknowledge that the dead were not aware of the discoveries of the night shift workers. And that one of ICL Iberia’s goals is to improve internal communication systems. But they also emphasize that, even if the three young geologists had been informed of these circumstances, nothing would have changed. Surely they detected them, they insist. And there was nothing to suggest, they concluded, that the roof could come off where they were.
