Rescue teams continue searching for the nine missing workers behind the landslide occurred this Tuesday in a gold mine in Erzincan, eastern Turkey, while efforts also continue to prevent dangerous chemicals from reaching the Euphrates River. Parallel, several workers of the Anagold company, owner of the mine, have been arrested. According to Europa Press, those detained work as managers and administrators of the company.

“The work continues without pause. Our only objective is to locate these nine people. It is a difficult task, but We continue day and night, rain or shine“, the Minister of the Interior, Ali Yerlikaya, said this Wednesday, quoted by Efe, during a visit to relatives of the miners. The minister specified that five of the workers were in a prefabricated shed when the disaster occurred, while three others They were operating a construction machine and another worker was driving a truck.

More of 330 search and rescue experts are located on site, as part of a device for 1,700 people which is making efforts to locate the missing, supported by more than 600 vehicles, 32 excavators, six drones and five metal detectors, as detailed by Yerlikaya. The metal detectors They are the main hope, he explained, since with them they should be able to locate the booth and the vehicles in which the workers were trapped when the avalanche occurred.

However, the immense mass of dislodged land makes tasks difficult and delays rescue, since “it is about 10 million cubic meters of land spread over an area of ​​about 10 hectares,” according to the Turkish Minister of the Interior.

Threat of ecological disaster

The avalanche, as Anagold confirmed this Tuesday, occurred in a place where large quantities of mineral extracted from the open pit mine are temporarily accumulated. This mineral, already crushed, is subjected to a constant drip of a cyanide solution that ends up separating the gold from the stone. If this mixture of minerals saturated with cyanide reached the Euphrates River, just three kilometers from the accident site, it would cause a disaster for both wildlife and human health.

The governor of Erzincan province, Hamza Aydogdu, stated after the avalanche that it had not reached the river and the Ministry of Environment issued a statement stating that the floodgates of a local stream had been “closed” to prevent the mineral from entering. flowed to the Euphrates. It is not clear, however, How could a leak be avoided? of the toxic substance if heavy rains occurred in the area.

The Minister of the Environment, Alparslan Bayraktar, who accompanied his Interior colleague on the visit, has reported that his entity carries out inspections of the mine every six months and that in August he ordered to stop work in an area of ​​32 hectares, but he did not find any indication of risk where the avalanche has now occurred.

For its part, the College of Engineers has indicated that it is likely that, by accumulating a excessive amount of mineral, This would exert such great pressure that liquefy the land massalso saturated with humidity due to recent rains.

Anagold is 80% owned by the multinational SSR Mining, while the remaining 20% ​​belongs to Çalik Holding, one of the largest industrial conglomerates in Turkey and considered close to the Islamist party AKP and President Erdogan.