Mexico City – Mexican government officials and national experts on Monday began an investigation into the cause of a gas explosion that killed 65 coal miners workers in northern Mexico – and said they would determine if security measures are sufficient to allow the mine to continue operating.
“The (mine’s) closure … will be definitive if there aren’t the conditions to operate safely,” federal Labor Secretary Francisco Salazar told a news conference, two days after officials broke the news that none of the miners had survived the Feb. 19 explosion.
The officials will first attempt to lower toxic methane gas levels so that rescue workers can resume their search for bodies in the Pasta de Conchos mine, about 135 kilometers (85 miles) southwest of the U.S. border at Eagle Pass, Texas.
The rescue teams, many of them miners themselves, dug day and night through piles of rock, dirt, glass, wood and metal in hopes of finding some of the miners alive.
Mine operators pumped fresh oxygen into the tunnels to aid the work and improve the trapped miners’ chances of survival. But by Friday, they said the air in the tunnels was too toxic and suspended the search.
On Saturday, officials said they had determined that the explosion had raised the temperature inside the mine to 600 degrees Celsius (1,110 degrees Fahrenheit) and released toxic methane and carbon monoxide that gobbled up nearly all of the oxygen. They acknowledged there was no way the trapped coal miners could have survived.
The investigation, which will involve the national miners’ union, officials from mine owner Grupo Mexico SA de CV, and university experts, also will try to determine responsibility for the explosion and recommend the appropriate sanctions, Salazar said.
Salazar denied that officials had kept information from miners’ relatives. He said that while they said from the beginning there was the chance the miners could have died, he said it was necessary for them to conduct scientific tests before they could say for certain.
“It’s a lie that information was hidden,” he said. “The only objective information … that there was no possibility of sustaining life became known on Saturday.” Government officials also have suggested reforming mining security laws and enacting legal reforms that would allow mining companies to extract methane gas before mining the coal, something not currently permitted.
Salazar said the government will make sure that Grupo Mexico honor its promise to give each of the miners’ families US$75,000 (euro63,300). The company also has promised to pay the workers’ salaries until they can arrange a pension for each family.
