Post #255

Jagersfontein Dam Collapse [ Cost of Negligence ] In Dutch, the word “fontein” has a strong linguistic connection to the word “fountain” - something many residents of South Africa's Free State learned the hard way in September 2022. 🌟On a Sunday morning in September 2022, a wall of mining waste broke loose in Jagersfontein and collapsed onto a nearby settlement like a sudden flood. Homes were submerged within minutes, cars and trees were swept away. Three people were killed, including a small child. ➡️ Jagersfontein is an old diamond mine in South Africa’s Free State. It was established in the 1870s by what would later become De Beers, and became the deepest hand-excavated hole in the world. Large-scale mining ended decades ago, but in recent years a private company returned to the site to reprocess old mine dumps and extract the remaining diamonds. The waste from this reprocessing was pumped into a nearby tailings dam. ➡️ In the weeks leading up to the collapse, local residents reported water seepage and wet spots on the dam wall. Between 2019 and 2021, consulting engineering firms and South Africa’s Department of Water Affairs concluded that the tailings dam was nearing capacity and had a future life of nine to 26 monthss. On 11 September 2022, part of the embankment collapsed, releasing an estimated one million cubic meters of tailings waste... #CostOfNegligence Devils Below