DDASaccident819

The primary cause of this accident is listed as a ‘Field control inadequacy’ because the person in charge at the site had decided to move fuzed explosive hazards and did not enforce safety distances that would have reduced the casualty toll in the event of an accident. The secondary cause is listed as ‘Inadequate training’, because, while all of the victims had extensive experience, it seems that their training had not prepared them to conduct this task safely. It is surprising that five ex-pat specialists who had been supervising the teams of national deminers who found the mines should have been loading the trucks for transit without the help of the deminers. This may indicate that there was something ‘unusual’ about the hazards being moved, so they did not want to ask deminers to take the risk. However, if an increased risk had been anticipated the ‘one person at risk’ rule should have been applied. If the story of continued explosions for 30 minutes is true, it seems that some explosions were caused by the vehicle fires that followed the first blast. These may have been of ammunition or munitions other than mines