Hwange
Hwange, Wankie until 1982, is a town with 32,566 inhabitants ( 2006) in the province of Matabeleland North in Zimbabwe on road and railway Bulawayo - Victoria Falls. The town has a tourist -oriented airport since 1972/74. It was founded in 1903 and named after the chief, Whanga, the village settlement. The city is plain and boring, but lives indirectly by tourism, as one of the finest game reserves in Africa, the Hwange National Park, with 14,000 km ², is located south of the city in close proximity and within reach of a day trip, namely 70 km, the Victoria Falls of the Zambezi and Lake Kariba. In the National Park, in the cases and on the lake there are tourist hotels.
Hwange is since 1901 primarily a coal mining area, the main seams and the largest coal mine in Zimbabwe can be found here. There are reduced to 80 percent in mining annually 5.8 million tons of coal. The promotion is 40 percent state-owned, 32 percent owned by the UK wealth manager Nicholas van Hoogstraten. Probably only at Moatize in Mozambique are large coal deposits. The coal is transported almost entirely by rail. Transfer station between the coal train and the state railway Thomson Junction. Over decades, keeps the Hwange National Railways of Zimbabwe already under steam. There is the Hwange power station. The coal but is also used for steel processing. Otherwise, the clay deposits for the production of bricks to be used.
On June 6, 1972, a methane gas explosion that triggered several coal dust explosions occurred in the whole area of mine Wankie 2. Here, the entire mining area of the pit was recorded. Multiple weather and production wells were destroyed, as well as surface facilities. Despite intensive rescue attempts, the consequences were devastating. Underground there were no survivors. This underground disaster, one of the worst in the world, which became known as the Wankie coal mine disaster in the history of mining, called 427 deaths. Wankie 2 was completely closed. Today is located on the site of the above-ground pit, a memorial.
A problem of Hwange is the wild population of disused conveying surfaces 40 km ². On one of them is now even a hospital, a school, houses and a church. The groundwater rises and there is no information why the mining areas have been shut down: because of the water or due to exhaustion of the deposits. Meanwhile, 14 million cubic meters of water have accumulated, some of which emerges through old wells. It is very acidic ( pH 2.4 ) and carries dissolved metal salts.