Miners from Kakanj remembered 128 fallen colleagues. They have lost their lives in the cave “Orasi” on the 7th of June, 1965.
The pit was hit by a powerful explosion of methane around 12 pm. The center of the explosion was in the preparatory pit that was marked as excavation 207 by mining engineers. The force of the explosion destroyed a pit along the entire length, the barrier was dipped, and machinery and electrical installations were damaged.
After the explosion, air strike transferred to the adjacent excavation 206. The Commission was unable to determine with certainty what was the cause of the explosion of methane since the excavation was destroyed and full of gas, and it was impossible to examine the electrical equipment, cables, materials, switches and other equipment in details.
The possibility that the ignition and explosion of methane were caused by unsafe petrol lamp is not excluded, as well as improper handling with safe lamp; unsafe dripping accumulator lamp, defective electrical equipment and installations or by the usage of smoking supplies.
Insufficiently informed workers about the function and use of self-rescuers contributed to massive scale of the disaster.
Workers from mining sites (about 140 of them), led by the supervisor and superintendents, despite the fact that they chose a wrong direction for retreat, passed an open storage containing the 91 self-rescuers, and no one used none of them, no matter that their purpose is exactly to help miners to pass through the zone intoxicated by carbon monoxide.
(Source: nap.ba)
