Flooding kills at least fifteen folllowing dam failure at Russian gold mine.

Fifteen people have died and five more are still missing following the collapse of a series of dams at a gold mine in Krasnoyarsk Krai on Saturday 19 October 2019. The dam had apparently been built across the Seiba River, which produces alluvial gold (gold which is present in a rock formation at a very low level, but which is eroded out of the rock by the action of water, and then concentrated in certain places by the action of the water). Such dams can either form a body of more-or-less still water on a fast moving watercourse, causing it to drop its sediment load, in this case including gold, or simply allow miners access to areas when gold rich sediments would normally be covered by water. The flood is reported to have swept away a number of housing blocks being used by workers at the mine, leading to the fatalities.

Flooding at an alluvial gold mine in Krasnoyarsk Krai, following a dam collapse on 19 October 2019. Russian Emergencies Ministry/TASS.

Following the collapse an investigation by Russian federal authorities has established that the mines owners did not have permission to dam the river, and that the mine's overseer did not hold a relevant mining qualification. The chief executive officer of the mining company Sisim has been arrested following the incident, as has a senior manager at the company, and the site overseer. 

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Two Sierra Leonean artisanal miners killed by soil cave-in.

Two artisanal miners reportedly died in a soil cave-in near Sagbe and Futigiaya villages in Kono District, eastern Sierra Leone, on Thursday, 4 April 2013. Their bodies have been taken to Koidu General Hospital.

The area where the two miners died on 4 April 2012. Google Maps.

Artisanal mining is widespread in eastern Sierra Leone. It is often referred to as 'illicit', though in a country with little formal employment this is somewhat unfair, with local people viewing small scale mining as a traditional way of gaining some hard cash. The area is covered by poorly consolidated alluvial (river) sediments, washed out from the mineral rich Fouta Djallon Highlands, in neighbouring Guinea, since the last ice age. These loose sediments can be excavated and panned to produce small amounts of gold and diamonds. This can be a dangerous task, as sediments close to the surface are likely to have been worked by previous generations of villagers, requiring deeper pits to be dug into the often waterlogged sediments, with the accompanying risk of pit collapses.

An artisanal mine at Tumbodu, to the northeast of the one where the 4 April cave-in occurred. Simon Akam/Reuters.

See also Chilean miners strike after landslip kills worker, 83 feared dead after Tibetan landslip, Miners trapped by flooding at Qielichong Coal Mine in Hunan Province, China, Human Rights Watch reports on mining in India and Acid spill from gold mine adds to Edith River's woes.

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