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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | January 2007 
Mexican President Vows to Recover Bodies of 63 Coal Miners Killed in Mine Blast
 Associated Press
| | An underground explosion at the Grupo Mexico mine on Feb. 19 in northern Coahuila sparked temperatures reaching 600 degrees Celsius (1,110 degrees Fahrenheit), killing 65 miners. |
Piedras Negras, Mexico: President Felipe Calderon has promised to recover the remains of 63 coal miners killed nearly a year ago in a northern Mexico mine blast and to find who was responsible for the tragedy.
"I have given orders for the Labor Department to continue the investigation and fix responsibility (for the disaster)," Calderon told a group of the miners' relatives on Wednesday. The relatives approached the president after he inaugurated a factory in Ramos Arizpe, near the Coahuila state capital of Piedras Negras about 850 kilometers (530 miles) north of Mexico City.
An underground explosion at the Grupo Mexico mine on Feb. 19 in northern Coahuila sparked temperatures reaching 600 degrees Celsius (1,110 degrees Fahrenheit), killing 65 miners. Rescuers have recovered the remains of two miners but tons of wood, rock and metal, as well as toxic gas, have hindered the recovery of the others.
"We want to be assured they will be rescued because often we hear rumors the mine will be sealed," Maribel Rico, whose brother Gil Rico died in the blast, told Calderon. "We want to have a tomb for each one of them where we can bring them flowers."
Last month, Coahuila state prosecutors said they would seek to charge 10 mine managers and federal government inspectors with homicide, after investigators allegedly found they did not correct unsafe conditions detected eight months before the blast.
Also Wednesday, a coal miner was crushed to death and four others were injured after the collapse of a mine shaft in Nueva Rosita, a town neighboring San Juan de Sabinas where the Feb. 19 mine blast occurred.
Pedro Flores, 48, was killed and trapped inside the shaft, and his body was removed about an hour later by co-workers, said Coahuila civil protection official Federico Mendez.
The federal Labor Department released a statement later Wednesday saying it would order the mine, owned by the company Drumak, S.A., to shut down until the cause of the accident was determined and the safety of other workers assured. |
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