Lassing mine disaster
The mining accident in Lassing occurred on the morning of July 17, 1998. In the mining accident in the Upper Styrian community of Lassing , ten miners from a rescue team who had set out to rescue someone who had been buried were killed.
Mine
geology
Lassing is home to the largest known carbonate- bound valley deposit in the Eastern Alps. Geologically it is assigned to the northern Grauwackenzone of Upper Styria. The deposit comprises two construction fields, the north and south fields, of which the south field has no connection to the terrain surface. It is covered by approx. 60 m thick loose rock.
history
The Lassinger Talk was discovered in 1891 by the local landowner Krennmoar during construction work; Krennmoar secured the mining rights. In 1901, the Bischetsrieder & Gielow company began underground mining. In the mid-1920s, the promotion was suspended for a few years due to the owner's bankruptcy. In 1939 it was taken over by the family business Talcumwerke Naintsch . In 1988 the mine became the property of the Rio Tinto Group . In the 1990s, the mine with the attached processing plants produced around 30,000 tons of talc per year. At the time of the accident, 34 employees were working in the company, including 8 underground .
In North Field was until the late 1970s caving operated, after which the shifted degradation in the southern area, which in the room-and was digested with lean concrete offset. The Südfeld was by the 1978-80 to 204 m sunk Renée- shaft to ten soles aligned .
Course of events
On July 17, 1998, the roof of an illegally mined floor collapsed . Water seeped in and caused mud to fall. On the surface, this could be seen from the fact that a house in the Moos district, under which the mine was located, slowly sank into the Pinge . The crater got deeper and bigger; a total of 2 houses were destroyed and 18 houses damaged. After the accident, some of the houses in the immediate vicinity were demolished.
The 24-year-old miner Georg Hainzl was probably buried in a snack chamber when the first mud fell.
Telephone contact with Hainzl broke off after a while. A rescue team of nine miners and a geologist drove into the mountain on the same day. But at 10 p.m., another mud slump caused the pit to implode. Contact with the rescue team broke off; the crater grew, lights went out, lamp posts were crooked.
Soon it was said that there was no longer any rescue for the eleven buried people. Special drills from Germany were canceled again by the plant management.
Ten days later, Hainzl was saved in astonishingly good health. This was achieved by the German drilling company H. Angers Söhne from Hessisch Lichtenau , which had previously worked with OMV and owned a suitable drilling rig that (unlike OMV equipment) was suitable for large diameters and rather shallow drilling depths. In cooperation with the bore OMV was charged with 60 cm diameter sunk . The pressure chamber made to measure by OMV was not required because there was no excess pressure in Georg Hainzl's survival chamber .
The ten men on the rescue team stayed in the mountain and were pronounced dead. In 2000, the search for their bodies was stopped.
consequences
Legal proceedings
Of the five accused, the manager of the Naintscher Mineralwerke was sentenced to two years in prison, eight months of which was unconditional. He is said to have no longer adhered to the operational plans and the emergency plan since 1993. The map series was inadequate and the pit was not even properly measured. The Leoben miner was conditionally sentenced to six months because years of neglect of the inspection and supervisory duties were found and because he had issued five approval notices without having visited the relevant places. Two defendants were acquitted.
End of talc removal
The mine accident sealed the end of talc mining in Lassing after around 100 years . The mine was closed and the grinder was sold to Paltentaler Holding in Rottenmann in 2007 . The Naintscher Mineralwerke paid around 30 million euros in rescue costs and compensation for the surviving dependents and the rescued Georg Hainzl until 2003. In addition, there were restoration costs for 20 destroyed or damaged houses and compensation for the depreciation of properties and real estate. On the former pinge , in which the houses sank, there is now a memorial for the ten buried miners. It consists of ten grave slabs arranged in a circle and was inaugurated on May 25, 2002.
Austrian mining
In Austria, the lessons from Lassing led to profound changes in mining, rescue technology and information policy. This was followed by legal reforms in 1999, 2002 and 2004. The seemingly anachronistic Berghauptmannschaft Leoben, which was responsible in the Lassing case, was dissolved. The newly created mining authorities took over part of their tasks . In addition, the large mine rescue teams of the nationalized companies, which for decades also supplied the neighboring small businesses, but gradually dwindled, had to be given new forms. At the operational level, a mine rescue service was set up, which is coordinated by the Chamber of Commerce.
State of Styria
Since there was no organized psychological care for victims and their relatives at that time, Paul Scheichenberger, the local pastor, took over this. That is why the Styrian crisis intervention team was later founded by Governor Waltraud Klasnic , which henceforth looks after the victims of accidents, disasters, etc. Klasnic owed its reputation as the so-called mother of the country to her personal commitment in Lassing at the time .
Georg Hainzl
The rescued miner still lives with his family in Lassing today.
criticism
The company is said to have illegally excavated underground mines and too close to the surface of the earth. There were no current pit cracks; the rescue work would have had to rely in part on statements from miners.
According to internals, the rescue team should primarily secure the mine in order to be able to continue mining later.
The then Minister of Economic Affairs, Farnleitner , was accused of having rejected foreign aid that was immediately offered for too long.
Rescue work continued under pressure from the media. There were experts who did not consider the rescue drilling a chance of success.
literature
- Felix Blatt: The Lassing Mine disaster. (Pdf, 186 kB) a retrospective. In: Australian journal of emergency management. Rio Tinto Group, pp. 38–43 , accessed February 11, 2015 .
- Johann Farnleitner: Report by the International Committee of Experts on the Lassing mine accident. , January 16, 2004, in English, report to the Standing Committee for Industrial Safety and Health Protection in the Coal Mining and Other Extractive Industries (SHCMOEI) on December 3rd / 4th, 2003/Mergwerksunlück Lassing (22786 / EU XXII.GP), [1 ]
See also
Web links
- The disaster and the consequences. In: Styria magazine. stmv1.orf.at, accessed on February 11, 2015 .
- Disaster analysis 2003. In: cartoon.iguw.tuwien.ac.at. July 17, 2008, accessed February 11, 2015 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lassing as an impulse for crisis management. There was a great confusion of competence. In: news.at. July 7, 2008, accessed February 11, 2015 .
- ↑ H. Anger's Sons - Bohr und Brunnenbaugesellschaft since 1863. In: angers-soehne.com. Accessed July 5, 2018 (scroll down the timeline to 1998).
- ↑ a b Rescue company went bankrupt. In: tagesspiegel.de. July 27, 1998. Retrieved July 5, 2018 .
- ↑ Josef Buchta. Lower Austria's new state fire brigade commander. In: fireworld.at. March 31, 2006, accessed February 11, 2015 .
- ↑ Lassing ends in prison. In: derstandard.at. March 19, 2003, accessed February 1, 2017 .
- ↑ 15 years Lassing: "Give me my boy again" , courier on July 14, 2013
- ↑ Buried Memories , the Standard July 14, 2008
Coordinates: 47 ° 32 ′ 3 " N , 14 ° 14 ′ 46.7" E