SAVASTEPE, Turkey — Miner Erdal Bicak believes he knows why so many of his colleagues died in Turkey’s worst mining disaster: company negligence.

And he knows one other thing — he’s never going back down any mine again.

Bicak, 24, had just ended his shift Tuesday and was making his way to the surface when managers ordered him back underground because of a problem in the Soma coal mine in western Turkey.

“The company is guilty,” Bicak told The Associated Press, adding that managers had machines that measure methane gas levels. “The new gas levels had gotten too high and they didn’t tell us in time.”

The miner also said government safety inspectors never visited the lower reaches of the Soma mine and have no idea of how bad conditions get as workers trudge deeper underground.

Bicak, whose leg was badly injured and in a cast, recounted his miraculous escape late Friday while at a candle-lit vigil for Soma victims in the town square of nearby Savastepe.

Public anger has surged in the wake of the Soma coal mine inferno that killed at least 299 miners. Police used tear gas and water cannon Friday to disperse rock-throwing protesters in Soma who were demanding that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government resign. In Istanbul, police broke up a crowd who lit candles to honor the Soma victims.

Bicak said he ended up about a half-mile underground with 150 people Tuesday afternoon when he heard an explosion.

He said they were given old oxygen masks. Bicak and a close friend tried to make it to an exit, but there was a lot of smoke. Bicak eventually made it out of the mine with his friend.