Merriespruit disaster
Coordinates: 28 ° 7 ′ 52 ″ S , 26 ° 50 ′ 40 ″ E
The settling tank disaster of Merriespruit happened on the evening of 22. February 1994 at 19 o'clock, when the dam of the settling tank in 4A of Harmony - Gold Mine broke and Merriespruit , a suburb of Virginia in the South African province of Free State , flooded. 17 people were killed.
In the late afternoon of that day there was a thunderstorm and about 50mm of rain fell in 30 minutes. Eyewitnesses saw water flow over the top of the dam. After the dam broke, 600,000 m³ of mud flowed 4 km. The next houses, 300 m below the dam, were hit by a 2.5 m high wave of water and mud.
In addition to the 17 dead, there was widespread destruction and environmental damage. 80 houses were destroyed.
In a later trial, the owner, operator and six employees were sentenced to heavy fines. The dam had been in very poor condition before the accident and the freeboard was inadequate. In 1995 new regulations for settling basins were enacted.
literature
- Fritz Wagener: The Merriespruit slimes dam failure: Overview and lessons learned. In: Journal of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering. Vol. 39, No. 3, 1997, ISSN 1021-2019 , pp. 11-15.
- JH Strydom, AAB Williams: A review of important and interesting technical findings regarding the tailings dam failure at Merriespruit. In: Journal of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering. Vol. 41, No. 4, 1999, pp. 1-9.
- HJ Van Niekerk, MJ Viljoen: Causes and consequences of the Merriespruit and other tailings-dam failures. In: Land Degradation & Development. Vol. 16, No. 2, 2005, ISSN 1085-3278 , pp. 201-212, doi : 10.1002 / ldr.681 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Merriespruit Disaster. Report from March 22, 2012 on www.news24.com (English)
- ^ Niekerk, 2005