Miners drilling at Freeport training center in Timika, Papua. Thirty-two workers are believed to be trapped after a landslide hit one of the firm’s mines. (JG Photo/Jurnasyanto Sukarno)
[Updated at 7:08 p.m.]
Four workers have been pulled alive from a tunnel which caved in Tuesday at a mine in remote eastern Indonesia but police said 32 were still trapped underground.
The accident happened at Freeport-McMoRan’s Grasberg, one of the world’s biggest gold and copper mines which has been hit by a string of problems including a major 2011 strike that affected production.
“The roof of the tunnel suddenly collapsed at 7:45 a.m. and 32 workers were trapped. The landslide occurred at the entry point of the Big Gossan tunnel area. There is a possibility that the evacuation process can be done on the other side of the tunnel,” Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the National Disaster and Mitigation Agency (BNPB), said on Tuesday.
Sutopo added that the search and rescue team managed to evacuate four workers from the tunnel, but their condition is still unknown.
Local police chief Jermias Rontini told AFP that he was not hopeful for those still trapped. “In the past, similar tunnel collapses caused fatalities as people who were trapped couldn’t get enough oxygen.”
Indonesian news portal Tempo.co reported that most of the trapped workers were still undergoing training.
The Indonesian subsidiary of US firm Freeport said the tunnel collapse happened in an underground training area, adding that the rescue was “difficult and will take some time to complete”.
The company said it did not expect production to be affected.
It did not disclose the nationalities of those involved in the accident, although the vast majority of the more than 24,000 workers at the mine are Indonesian. Neither police nor Freeport said why the accident happened.
The 2011 strike lasted three months and crippled production, only ending once the firm agreed to a huge pay rise.
The industrial action sparked a wave of deadly clashes between police and gunmen around the mine, with at least 11 people, all Indonesians, killed.
Earlier this month some 1,100 workers employed by Freeport contractors staged a three-day strike over pay but it caused only minimal disruption to production.
Additional reporting by AFP