At least 16 people, including three children, have died from a leak of a toxic nitrate gas used by illegal miners to process gold at a settlement of huddled metal shacks, South African police and local officials said late Wednesday.
Emergency services initially announced that up to 24 people could be dead in Angelo’s settlement in Boksburg, a town on the eastern outskirts of Johannesburg. But police and Gauteng provincial chief minister Panyaza Lesufi later said the death toll had been confirmed at 16 after a body count.
“It’s not a nice scene at all… It’s painful, emotionally draining and tragic,” Lesufi, who visited the scene, was quoted as saying in news reports.
Crews were searching the area for other victims well into the night. The bodies of the victims remained lying on the ground hours after the leak was reported around 8 pm as emergency services waited for forensic investigators and pathologists to arrive to process the scene. The bodies were still there at 3 a.m.
“We cannot move anyone. The bodies are still where they are on the ground,” said emergency services spokesman William Ntladi.
A forensic investigator was seen covering the body of a young child with a blanket. Another body could be seen covered with a white cloth with a shoe sticking out of it. It lay under a strip of yellow police tape that cordoned off the area.
Police said the three boys killed were ages 1, 6 and 15. Two people were taken to the hospital for treatment, police said.
Boksburg is the city where 41 people died after a truck carrying liquefied petroleum gas got stuck under a bridge and exploded on Christmas Eve.
Ntladi said the deaths on Wednesday were caused by nitrate gas that leaked from a gas cylinder kept in a shack. He said the boat had been emptied in the escape and crews were able to begin checking an area extending 100 yards from the cylinder for any further casualties.
The researchers searched in narrow alleyways between shacks, plunged in darkness by the lack of public lighting, a situation common in the deeply impoverished informal settlements found in and around South African cities. Six police cars, an armored car and an ambulance were parked at the entrance to Angelo’s settlement.
Ntladi said information authorities had indicated that the cylinder that caused the leak was being used by illegal miners to separate gold from earth and rock.
Lesufi, the Gauteng premier, tweeted videos of the dusty interior of a shack where at least four gas cylinders can be seen on metal stands. The video also shows what Lesufi said was the cylinder responsible for the leak lying on the ground next to the entrance to the hut.
Authorities did not say whether illegal miners they believed to be responsible for the gas leak were among the victims.
Illegal mining is rife in the gold-rich areas around Johannesburg, where miners enter disused and closed mines to search for surplus deposits.
Deaths in underground mining are also common and the South African government department responsible for mining recently announced that at least 31 illegal miners were believed to have been killed in a gas explosion at a disused mine in the central city of Welkom. from South Africa. The cause was methane gas, the mining department said.
Wednesday’s tragedy is likely to further stoke the anger of illegal miners, who are often immigrants from neighboring countries, operate in organized gangs and are blamed for bringing crime to neighborhoods.
Violence against illegal miners erupted last year and lasted for days in an area west of Johannesburg after a group of 80 men, some of whom were believed to be illegal miners, were accused of gang-raping eight women who worked on a television filming in a disused mine.
