Siberia mine blast kills 52
Workers – and rescuers
An explosion in a Siberian coal mine left 52 miners and rescuers dead about 820 feet underground on Thursday, Russian officials said.
Hours after a methanegas explosion and fire filled the mine with toxic fumes, rescuers found 14 bodies but then were forced to halt the search for 38 others due to a buildup of methane and carbon monoxide gas from the fire. Another 239 people were rescued.
The state Tass and RIANovosti news agencies cited emergency officials as saying there was no chance of finding more survivors in the Listvyazhnaya mine, in the Kemerovo region.
The Interfax news agency cited a representative of the regional administration who put the death toll at 52.
It was the deadliest mine accident in Russia since 2010, when two methane explosions and a fire killed 91 people at the Raspadskaya mine in the same Kemerovo region.
A total of 285 people were in the Listvyazhnaya mine early Thursday when the blast sent smoke that filled the mine through the ventilation system.
Rescuers led to the surface 239 miners, 49 of whom were injured, and found 11 bodies. Later in the day, six rescuers died while searching a remote section of the mine, reports said.
Russia’s Deputy Prosecutor General Dmitry Demeshin said the fire most likely resulted from a methane explosion caused by a spark.
The miners who survived described their shock.
“Impact. Air. Dust. And then, we smelled gas and just started walking out, as many as we could,” said one miner, Sergey Golubin. “We didn’t even realize what happened at first and took some gas in.”
Another, Rustam Chebelkov, recalled his rescue.
“I was crawling, and then I felt them grabbing me,” he said. “I reached my arms out to them. They couldn’t see me. The visibility was bad. They grabbed me and pulled me out. If not for them, we’d be dead.”
Explosions of methane released from coal beds in mining are rare, but cause the most fatalities in the coal-mining industry.
Russia’s Investigative Committee launched a criminal probe into the fire over violations of safety regulations. It said the mine director and two senior managers were detained.
President Vladimir Putin extended his condolences to the families of the dead and ordered the government to offer all necessary assistance to the injured.
Thursday’s fire wasn’t the first deadly accident at the Listvyazhnaya mine. In 2004, a methane explosion left 13 miners dead.
In 2007, a methane explosion at the Ulyanovskaya mine in the Kemerovo region killed 110 miners in the deadliest mine accident since Soviet times.