On 13 February 2024, at the Çöpler Gold Mine in Erzincan Province, eastern Turkey, a mass of heap leach material collapsed, trapping a group of nine miners as it slid toward a creek.
[2] In 2020, Alacer Gold Corp. merged with the Canadian SSR Mining Inc., which moved its headquarters from Canada to Denver, Colorado, United States.
[8] At 14:28 local time (11:28 GMT) on 13 February 2024, a huge mass of mud from the gold mine flowed through the valley in a large area.
A total of 827 personnel, including 339 professionals consisting of Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD), Gendarmerie Search and Rescue Battalion Command (JAK), Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), General Directorate of Security (EGM), miners and NGO members, took part in the search and rescue operation.
[13] After resuming the search operations, the body of the first of nine victims, a truck driver of the subcontractor company, was found in the manganese mine field after 53 days from the disaster on 6 April 2024.
[19] As the first precaution to the cyanide danger, the culvert covers of Sabırlı Stream were closed to prevent the material flowing during the landslide from reaching the Euphrates River.
[21] In order to take samples from the region and monitor them continuously, a team of ten experts from the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change, including two georadars, one multistation, two mobile devices with two sets of monitoring devices and a mobile laboratory, were immediately dispatched to the region.
An eight-member committee consisting of experts in geology, occupational health, mining, construction, agriculture, environment, mapping and chemistry, was set up to report to them.
The court ordered the arrest of four primary responsibles on 24 May 2024 among them, the occupational safety and health manager, the mine operations supervisor, the project coordinator and the drilling and blasting engineer.
[21] The prosecutor's office stated that "the most important reasons for the landslide are increasing the amount of solution introduced into the soil, the leach heap is twice as large as it should be, and regular dynamite explosions every day at 12 hours."
It was added that "dynamite was detonated at noon, and the violence gradually increased even the area was evacuated due to the detection of a crack.
[27] A new regulation that came into force on 19 March 2024, increased the compensation amount to be paid to the relatives of miners, who lost their lives in mining accidents, from ₺ 150,000 (approx.