At 11:46 on Monday morning, 9 November, which was 08:46 in Greenwich, something gave way above a furnace at the HABAS steel works in Aliaga. Aliaga is an industrial district on Turkiye’s Aegean coast, about 60 kilometres (37 miles) north of Izmir. By evening, AFP and Anadolu reported for Al Jazeera, at least 16 people were dead and 13 injured.

The authorities’ account of what happened is short, and it reads like a chain of small failures. The Izmir governor’s office said in its initial assessment that an overhead crane broke loose and fell into an electric arc furnace while liquid steel was being cast. The governor, Suleyman Elban, added more detail. Workers were replacing the furnace, he said, when a ceiling crane collapsed and dropped its load into it. A natural gas line was damaged, and then came the explosion. Al Jazeera’s version describes the work as a boiler replacement. The rest of the sequence is the same in both.

Across the street

Deniz Ulker watched from across the road. He said the blast felt like an “earthquake”.

When I looked at the factory across the street, thick black smoke was coming out.

He said “a fire broke out where the chimney was.” Pictures on local television showed large plumes of grey dust rising over the plant, which stands in the Bozkoy neighbourhood.

A number that grows

After an industrial disaster the death toll comes out in instalments, and each one is worse than the last. In its first statement the governor’s office reported three dead and 14 injured, three of them seriously. An updated statement, as SteelOrbis reported, raised the toll to six. The figure that went round the world, 16 dead, came from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself. He gave it after a Cabinet meeting in Ankara, along with 13 injured, two of them in serious condition.

Each revision meant more families getting the same news that afternoon. The higher the number climbed, the further its source moved from the factory gate: first the provincial governor, then the head of state, speaking more than 500 kilometres away.

The third time

Workers’ groups say the plant has a long record of safety problems. The Izmir branch of Turkiye’s Labour Party, a small Marxist group, called Monday’s blast “the third fatal incident” at the factory in three weeks. In a post on X, the party said seven workers had died in accidents there over the past decade, and that maintenance and safety standards were not being met. These are the party’s claims. Neither the company nor the authorities have publicly addressed them.

If the count is right, it shows how routine these deaths have become. One death in a decade is called an accident. Seven are called an industry. Three in three weeks, at one address, ought to be called a warning. That is a reflection, not a finding, and whether anyone in authority reads it that way remains to be seen.

The inquiry

Erdogan said judicial and administrative investigations had been opened to establish the cause and identify those responsible. When something terrible happens, opening an inquiry is usually the state’s first move. The harder part, which can take months or years, is what the inquiry concludes and whose names end up in it. Messages of condolence came in from the European Union and from Azerbaijan.

In Aliaga the work was still physical, not judicial. Rescuers were reported to be trying to reach 10 people trapped under the rubble. Izmir’s mayor, Cemil Tugay, said the final number of dead and injured would not be known until the rubble was cleared.