A DARK cloud hovers over Zambia following the tragic mine accident at Chingola’s Sensele open pit mine over 10 days ago.
Dozens of miners are still missing and feared dead after the makeshift tunnels they were working, burrowed deep into the earth collapsed following flash floods, the consequence of seasonal torrential rains pummeling the precincts of the mine.
As the painstaking effort to recover the bodies of those who are missing in the mishap continues, the days, minutes, and seconds ticking by dissipate the hopes of the waiting families, like a morning dew, fading with every new ray of the glistening morning sun.
The glimmer of hope that any more people may be plucked out alive is diminishing like the dying cinder of a fire.
The hearts of many Zambians go to grieving their loved ones Just to imagine the pain that those whose relatives are still missing in the pits of the mine are enduring. On the tenterhooks, and with bated breath, everyday, they await the news that the next body to be brought out may be that of their son, brother cousin, or father, maybe relative, will by some stroke of luck walk out alive.
It is unimaginable to phantom the suffering that those that remain entombed and may never make it out to the surface went through.
Meeting their fate through asphyxiation due to lack of oxygen, or by slowly drowning in rising muddy flood waters in the dark pits with no place to escape, and yet remaining faithful that somehow, they will get out is enough to evoke deep anguish and unleashing torrents of emotions.
Even as excruciating as it may be, it is slowly dawning on everyone that what started as a search and rescue operation may just as well end up as a search and recovery effort.
Human beings can only survive without food and water for an average of eight to 21 days, however, with only water, the survival time may even go up to 60 days. This is also dependent on many other circumstances.
And yet we know that miracles do happen, just as we saw the 49 year old Kakoma emerge out of the pit alive, five days after the accident.
The rescue which has seen all manner of resources and expertise available at governments disposal, thrown into the effort, the race against time also an added critical element, the whole operation is
compounded by the status of the mine site which is still wet and unstable, making the work of the earth moving equipment constrained.
Use of Excavators, Front End loaders and other specialised machinery is limited.
As in the words of a government official supervising the effort, “We are working very carefully to ensure that we do not have a disaster on top of another because the job is delicate and we need to tread
carefully in the rescue mission”.
Yet, as for yesterday, the day was special because the President of the Republic, Hakainde Hichilema returned to Chingola to attend the mass burial of nine of the victims who were brought out dead.
Six days after his first on-sight visit, to mourn and commiserate with the families of those miners whose bodies were among the first to be retrieved.
The President attended the emotionally charged gathering of mourners who thronged the Chingola Cemetery to bid farewell to seven of the fallen miners in a mass funeral.
The President wrote: “Today, we attended the burial of nine miners who lost their lives in the Sensele open cast mine disaster in Chingola, Copperbelt. At the final resting place of the dearly departed miners, we condoled with the bereaved families and mourners.
We commended the community and the rescue teams for displaying incredible strength and bravery in the face of this very delicate and complicated operation.
Once this operation is concluded, we will work together to ensure that safe mining protocols are in place to minimise recurrence of such tragedies.”
The leadership of the country, at the highest level, has shown magnanimity towards the plight of those victims of the accident and their extended families.
Through the national and copperbelt government administration, the member of Parliament for Chingola, the Mines ministry and as seen, presidential level, there has been a show of compassion that has exceeded expectation, the quick response to the calamity and the general management of the disaster through the relevant ministries and indeed the general public must be commended.
Zambia has seen its own share of disasters over time and yet this particular Sensele mine disaster has brought to the fore our state of preparedness for such calamities, especially in the mining area.
It has also reminded us of the need to give particular attention to detail on what happens even in the less organised areas of economic activity such as the Sensele mine operation.
The disaster there has collectively jolted us into the realisation that there is actually more that needs to be done to actualize those stringent safety protocols.
It may not be the first major mining accident that the nation has experienced, definitely not the largest, in terms of loss of life or scale of damage to property. However, this one stands uniquely apart from the others because it is one which has happened outside any organised and legal set up.
The pain, the anguish and the irreparable damage through loss of life it has caused to the families and the nation, just as significant as any such accident that may happen.
It was an illegal enterprise whose operational dynamics touched on the socio-economic standing of the local population and therefore remains a delicate political puzzle to solve.
That is not to say that such realities supersede the importance of security and safety, but instead needed to be tackled in a more humane and sensitive way.
Lessons from which to learn are abound. Just how, even in a more organised mining venture, if you just lost concentration, just in that milli-second it takes to blink an eye, can spell the difference between life and death.
The old adage “accidents do not just happen, they are caused” fits the bill about the build up to the Mufulira mine accident, recorded as one of the worst ever in Zambia, just as does this one.
In the early hours of 25th of September in 1970, about two million tonnes of water and slimes cascaded into the main working area of the Mufulira mine, as an underground breach of a tailings dam occured, This happened as the night shift were on duty.
The tailings dam above them collapsed, literally drowning, crashing and killing 89 miners.
A sinkhole which opened on the surface allowing surface water to continue pouring into the workings had been left too late or was just ignored.
It was the worst mining disaster that Zambia had ever experienced and it caused widespread misery to the immediate mining population, the country at large the region and the world as news of the disaster reverberated.
The mine had started production earlier in 1933 with the introduction of backfill and cave mining in 1944.
For each ton of sand deposited, underground, one ton of slimes were pumped to the No3 impoundment. Prior to the disaster, it was estimated that the No3 impoundment contained an estimated 18 million tonnes of slimes.
As earlier alluded to, prior to the disaster, sinkholes opened up (as a result of the underground hanging walls collapsing) within the No3 trailing pond, a surface depression developed in the impoundment.
There were also two cases of minor mud ingress into the mine a few months before the main failure. The management were reluctant to accept and investigate the potential impact of future sinkholes.

Finally, one sinkhole opened connecting the underground workings and the tailings in the impoundment.
Work needed to be carried out on the No3 impoundment before the rainy season began in December. This gave the mine a little over two months to carry out some essential work. Priority had been given to prevent any further infiltration of surface runoff and rainfall into the sinkhole and thus eroding more tailings:
Did they?

Pump away the ponded water in the sinkhole and continue to pump throughout the rainy season.
Provide surface drainage to minimise inflow into the impoundment.
Protect the sinkhole from rainfall run in.
The first step was to build a bund around the dam which would adequately protect the sinkhole. It took thirteen days to construct the bund and install submersible pumps in the sinkholes to decant the ponded water.
This deluge, the worst mining disaster ever in the history of the country, had the subsequent socio-economic effect of having to resettle their widows and orphans. The cataclysm also led to a cut by as much as 50 percent of the national copper production, Zambia’s main foreign currency earner.
Following the accident, there was resultant reduction in government revenue generation to a decline in copper production ultimately having a severe impact on the nation’s fiscus.
The accident also occurred at a time of serious socio-political challenges in the newly independent Zambia. While the incident at Mufulira was costly to shareholders, the state and the affected families, its aftermath set out a new standard in mine safety on the copperbelt as well as the rest of the mining industry worldwide.
The Takeaways :-
The danger of a sudden or accidental rush of water or material which flows when it is wet is a long standing mining hazard.
Accidental inundation is a major cause of concern to the mining industry when it is necessary to work in the vicinity of a large water body.
This is because it presents a menace to life.A lake or an ocean or a large pool of water in the upper stream or water flooding adjacent old workings, if suddenly released to the lower active workings could easily flood mine workings and lead to fatalities.
Zambia is one of the foremost mining countries in the region and across the globe and therefore presents high safety standards in the sector. Yet it may be imperative to understand that the disaster that the nation is still reeling with, was an illegal operation which disregarded any of the safety protocols employed as standard.
And when the parallels are drawn, you will find a lot of similarities of the causes of the Sensele accident, as the case was in the Mufulira accident of the seventies.
The primary cause of the accident at Sensele was flooding of the mine caused by heavy rains falling, not at the mine site, but in the nearby higher ground areas, which caused flash flooding conditions inundating the deep tunnels in which the miners were working.
There was no working emergency system which could have warned the miners to abandon their posts and come to the surface to escape the rushing water and mud except for one or two human look out guards who were also overcome by the ferocity of the flood waters gashing into the tunnels.
Even before an official accident report is released, whatever information about the accident is being pieced together has the trappings of a disaster waiting to happen.
The case of the Sensele mine accident also brings to the fore safety measures and standards that may have been ignored or were totally not put in place.
But Maybe, this is a case for discussion for another day, given that we are in a period of deep mourning and grief following the disaster.
However, with the discovery of numerous mineral deposits dotted all over our country, and the proliferation of mining activities, some going uninspected, we as a nation need to go back to the drawing board and set new standards of safety.
Even as we mourn our dearly departed and get the full extent of the accident, even as we continue retrieving those who are still trapped, we have to look within ourselves and find the solutions to the
numerous challenges that affect the industry.
Lives have been lost, but as a nation we pray for a miracle, that we may find some of those who are still trapped still alive.
A time will come when we can look straight into each other’s eyes and ask those tough questions about what we may have done wrong and how we can do better to avoid such accidents.