Remembering an Accident: Baia Mare Cyanide Spill
On January 30, 2000, due to excessive amounts of snowfall a dam holding contaminated waters burst. This allowed 100,000 cubic meters of cyanide-contaminated water to spill over into farmlands and the Somes river. In addition to the cyanide, heavy metals were also poured into the rivers leaving a long-lasting negative affect on the environment, while contaminating the drinking water of 2.5 million Hungarians.
The spill had extreme consequences on the wildlife. On the Tisza stretch of the river, virtually all living animals were killed due to the contaminated water. On the Serbian section of the river 80% of all aquatic life was killed. Together the contaminated waters killed approximately 200 tons of fish and affected 62 species of fish, of which 20 are protected. The contamination was so bad that volunteers participated in removing the dead fish to prevent other wildlife from eating the fish and spreading the contamination through out the food chain.
To read more about the wildlife disaster please click on the link below.
http://archive.rec.org/REC/Publications/CyanideSpill/ENGCyanide.pdf
Major disasters are often wake-up calls for how important it is to ensure that they never happen again.
TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis is taught globally to help industries avoid them. Check out our global schedule at:
http://www.taproot.com/courses
