At least 15 people died in the collapse of an illegal gold mine in western Indonesia, while dozens were still trapped in the abandoned pit, according to officials reporting on Friday.
Illegal mining is common in Indonesia, especially in areas with mineral deposits. Informal miners extract what gold ore is left from abandoned sites, digging precariously with scant safety precautions.
The disaster happened Thursday evening in a remote area of West Sumatra province after a landslide following heavy rain, Ilham Wahab, a provincial disaster mitigation agency spokesperson, said. “The only thing we can tell is that at a gold mine, a landslide killed people by burying them, and a search for victims is ongoing,” he said. The government had so far confirmed 15 dead and three injured while rescue workers were still hunting for about 25 others.
Footage from the scene showed rescuers hauling one of the bodies covered onto an ambulance near the disaster site in the Solok district. The district’s disaster agency, confirming that the landslide occurred at an abandoned illegal mine site, said, “The location of the landslide is on an old mining pit which previous miners had abandoned.”
Efforts are difficult because of the hard, accessible terrain. Rescuers, including police, soldiers, and civilians, have to walk hours from the nearest village just to reach the place. Ilham explained:
“The location is quite far, and the terrain is tough. This has hampered evacuation efforts, but people are helping to expedite the process.”
The disaster agency of the Solok district reportedly noted that mobile phone coverage in the area is non-existent, a factor adding to complicating communication among rescuers. Agency official Irwan Effendy said that many victims were engaged in manual gold mining activities.
Indonesia is vulnerable to landslides during its rainy season, which normally falls between November and April, but weather-related disasters have struck outside the regular period in recent years. In July, a landslide on Sulawesi island near an illegal gold mine killed at least 27 people, and landslides and flooding last May in South Sulawesi killed 15 people and destroyed thousands of houses. A month earlier, a landslide in the same province killed 20 people.
