Negligent homicide in the shaft? 51 people die in an explosion in a Siberian coal mine. The ignorance of their superiors was evidently their undoing.
It was a futile race against death. A ten-man brigade had to flee several kilometers through the tunnels from smoke and gas to the main transport shaft. The miners wore so-called “self-rescuers”, respiratory masks with an oxygen reserve for two hours. The rescue workers suspect that during a short rest the men tried to breathe without a mask, lost consciousness and poisoned themselves with carbon dioxide.
On Wednesday 51 people – 46 miners and five rescuers – were killed in the “Listwaschnaja” mine in the Siberian coal region of Kemerovo. 64 people were injured. It was the worst mine disaster in Russia for eleven years, caused by hundreds of violations of safety rules, mainly due to the persistent ignorance of excessive gas levels underground. “Everyone has been waiting for this explosion,” said a former colleague of the colliery to the portal “meduza.io”
The morning shift was just coming to an end when around 9:50 a.m. local time there was a bang in a ventilation section at a depth of 250 meters. According to the public prosecutor’s office, a mixture of gas and air exploded there. Some of the victims were hit by the pressure wave. But coal dust was also thrown into the air and ignited, piles of coal that had not yet been removed caught fire, and the ventilation system then blew the poisonous smoke into other tunnels and struts.
According to “RIA Novosti” there is said to have been a second explosion that killed several members of the rescue teams. The mine management denies this. There were a total of 285 people underground, 239 escaped death. The last one to show up yesterday morning was a paramedic who was believed dead. According to a doctor, he could not remember how he saved himself.
Until late Wednesday evening there was hope that 35 missing miners could still be saved. But the head of the rescue team, Yuri Sche, said yesterday: “It is impossible to imagine that someone survived in the gas atmosphere that prevails in the accident section.” cannot be recovered.
The underground smelled of gas for a long time, writes the “Komsomlskaya Pravda” and quotes an anonymous friend: “Everyone knew that there was gas in it, including the executive floor, of course.” But they forced the workforce in: “Work or quit!” . Denis Timochin, who worked there for three and a half years, says there was practically no security system there. “With a measured methane content of 1.5 percent you should have stopped all work, with two percent the conveyors should have switched off automatically, but the regulator was bypassed.” He worked with four percent gas until it went bad. The wife of a dead miner told the “BBC” that on November 15 there was already a fire in the mine, but the workforce was able to put it out themselves.
The mine is 65 years old and has an annual production capacity of 5.2 million tons. It belongs to the Kemerow concern SDS Ugol. According to its website, the mine meets all environmental and safety requirements, uses modern equipment and gas control systems. But apparently these are not working properly. According to the Rostechnadzor supervisory authority, “Listvyashnaya” was checked 127 times this year. They discovered 914 violations, stopped the mine nine times and collected fines totaling the equivalent of 47,000 euros.
Two criminal cases were opened, one against the management of the mine for negligent homicide and the other against two inspectors from Rostechnadzor who had checked the mine only a week ago.
Director Sergei Machrakow won a regional competition in August for the best mine boss in Kuzbass, as it says on the corporate portal. “You can talk a lot about achievements,” he said at the time. “But I know exactly that the most interesting things are still ahead of us.” Machrakov, his deputy and the department head responsible, were arrested on Thursday.
