The Bois du Cazier John Does were 17 men who were killed during the Bois du Cazier mining disaster in Marcinelle, Belgium, in 1956. Approximately 262 men died in the disaster, including the group of unidentified individuals. Their bodies were stated to have been too degraded to be identified at the time, with only personal items remaining. Officials claim among the unidentified dead, twelve were Italian, one was German, one was Algerian, and one was Greek.
In the autumn of 2021, the Bois du Cazier Museum began working with the Disaster Victim Identification service to identify the individuals with samples obtained from the surviving families of missing victims. However, officials claim that they doubted that conclusive identification could be made at the beginning of testing due to the disaster occurring over 60 years ago.
Case[]
On the morning of 8 August 1956, the Bois du Cazier coal mine experienced an accident when a hoist mechanism had begun processing before a coal wagon could be loaded onto it. Electric, oil, and air cables had broken due to this, and intense fires began in the underground section of the mine. Only 13 miners were able to be rescued from the underground, with 262 fatalities being recorded. Due to the high death toll, the accident was ranked as one of the worst mining disasters in Belgium's history. With a program hiring foreign workers having been in place at the mine, a large amount of the fatalities were not Belgian nationals. All of the bodies from the disaster were not fully retrieved until the 23 August.
In March 2002, the accident site was turned into a museum, preserved, and named a UNESCO World Heritage site. Later, in the autumn of 2021, the museum began working with the DVI service to identify the unidentified victims of the disaster. The service aimed to have all of the decedents identified by the 66th anniversary of the tragedy, but this goal has been unmet.
Sources[]
- Bois du Cazier Mine on Wikipedia
- The Brussels Times