Status: 25.11.2021 3:12 p.m.
At least eleven people were killed in a serious accident in a Russian coal mine. A fire had broken out underground. Dozens of pals are still trapped in the mine.
A fire in a coal mine in Siberia killed 11 people and injured more than 40. Dozens of other miners are still locked in the mine, said the authorities of the Kemerovo region in southwest Siberia. The rescue efforts were suspended in the afternoon due to the risk of explosion, reported the Interfax news agency, citing the mine operator.
A coal dust explosion had previously occurred underground. 46 miners are still trapped in the depths, said the governor of Kemerovo, Sergei Ziwiljow, on the short message service Telegram. At the time of the accident, a total of 285 people were underground. 239 of them were brought to safety. 49 people needed medical help. Russia’s acting minister for civil protection, Alexander Tschuprijan, spoke of 44 miners who had been taken to hospitals.
Have the safety regulations not been observed?
The official Russian news agency Tass reported, citing an unnamed official, that coal dust had caught fire and the smoke had quickly spread through the mine via the ventilation system. The Russian Investigative Committee opened a criminal investigation into the fire. There were allegations that safety regulations had not been observed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences to the relatives of the killed miners, as his spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced. In 2016, 36 miners were killed in a series of methane explosions in a coal mine in northern Russia.
Following the incident, authorities examined the safety of the country’s 58 coal mines, declaring 20 of them, or 34 percent, potentially unsafe. According to media reports, the now affected Listvyashnaya mine in Kemerovo was not among these mines. The last security check took place on November 19th.