Pain, crying and consternation took over the Angosturas path in the municipality of California, Santander, located in the province of Soto Norte. An incident, due to the accumulation of gases, extinguished three lives: two of them were foreigners and one was Colombian.
The national was identified as Luis Fernando Pérez García, 25 years old, who on April 21, 2023 obtained the title of social communicator from a prestigious university in Bucaramanga. According to those close to him, he was passionate about photography and was the son of former California councilman, Nelson Pérez.
“We are very sad about what happened to ‘Luisito’, as we affectionately called him. He was a very good student. He worked at the university’s Audiovisual Production Center. He wanted to continue studying and found his own media. He was very humble and had many friends. Recently, when he finished his degree, he started looking for work here in Bucaramanga, but he didn’t get it, he went to his family and today we found out the sad news, that he died in a gold mine,” said a former university classmate.
The other two deceased are of foreign nationality and would be a 14-year-old young man and his stepfather, whose identities have yet to be established, and, apparently, they resided in the municipality of Suratá.
This was the tragedy
The National Mining Agency, the Santander Disaster Risk Management Office (OGRD) and the California Mayor’s Office are carrying out investigations to determine the causes of the incident at the gold extraction mine.
The emergency due to gas accumulation would have occurred at 12:19 pm, this Wednesday, May 15, in the Angosturas village, in the ‘El Alta’ gold mine.
The causes of the tragedy, as Q’hubo learned, were due to the manipulation of equipment that was not suitable for underground mining.
According to a witness, it was the manipulation of a motor pump because the hole was full of water and they were trying to empty it of the liquid to begin the gold extraction work.
“The gases produced by combustion poisoned the personnel inside the mine, since mechanized ventilation was not guaranteed to dilute the gases,” the authorities’ report stated.
As a result of this emergency, three people died and six were transferred to the San Antonio Hospital in California. Those of greater complexity were sent to Bucaramanga.
“Three have a reserved prognosis and three are more stable. We await the report of the progress of his health status from the specialists; among the injured there is a minor of foreign nationality,” said an official from the California Mayor’s Office.
Eduard Jesús Sánchez, head of the Office for Disaster Risk Management of Santander, OGRD, confirmed that illegal gold extraction work was carried out in the sinkhole.
“They died from gas inhalation, that is what we know so far, and they worked illegally in the mine,” said the head of the OGRD.
Members of the Mining Rescue of the National Mining Agency, the Prosecutor’s Office and the Police arrived at the scene to carry out the removal of the bodies that will be transferred to the Institute of Legal Medicine in Bucaramanga.
Tragedies announced
Julio Acelas, director of the Santander Security Observatory, assured that the affected mine had been guarded until last Monday, May 13, by the National Army, a situation that was taken advantage of to enter and steal the gold illegally.
“The explosions occur due to illegal gold extraction, those who are the ‘bosses’ of this extraction come from the south of Bolívar and the lower Cauca of Antioquia and have been monopolizing the land abandoned by companies with legal titles in that region of Santander. In those areas, no one speaks out of fear because there is the presence of armed groups that guard those places,” Acelas said.
The director of the observatory assured that the miners entered the place without any control and this caused the tragedy.
“Illegal mining has become a public order problem and a threat to the environment, where mercury and explosives are used,” he said.
