A mine collapses in Democratic Republic of the Congo 🇨🇩, but workers save their colleagues.
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“Many of these caves are dug for cobalt and copper, pulled out in clumps called heterogenite. This video likely shows “artisanal miners”, aka miners not technically employed by a major mining corp, who use rebar and shovels to dig with virtually no safety equipment. These caves can be 60 meters deep, dug out by hand, and frequently collapse. These miners make anywhere from $.80 to $5 a day depending on the ore concentration and are commonly teenage boys.
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Once mined, the cobalt (or other minerals) is mixed at “depots” with the same cobalt mined by professional mining corps, and usually shipped to china to be manufactured into rechargeable batteries for iPhones and EVs, among other things.
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If anyone wants to learn more about what is going on here, read Cobalt Red. The author is a journalist who goes to the Congo and investigates Cobalt mining. "It’s an astounding tale of human rights atrocities.”