Rescuers pulled more bodies from a Siberian coal mine Tuesday as investigators tried to pinpoint what sparked a methane gas explosion that killed 105 miners in Russia’s deadliest mining disaster in a decade.
Among those killed were 20 top mine staff, including its chief engineer, who had been inside checking a British-made hazard monitoring system, said regional Gov. Aman Tuleyev. A British citizen, identified as Ian Robertson, and his interpreter were also killed. Robertson worked for the British-German mining consultancy IMC.
Some 200 workers were in the Ulyanovskaya mine when the blast occurred early Monday about 885 feet underground. Five people remained missing; 93 had been rescued.
“There was a bang and smoke, then the rescuers came. We switched on our safety kits and started going to the surface. Five of us came out. First they helped me to walk then it was all normal and I came back to my senses,” miner Alexei Loboda, told First Channel television.
Three days of mourning were called in the coal-rich region known as the Kuzbass where most of the population works in mining or related industries.
Putin orders investigation
President Vladimir Putin sent Tuleyev a telegram asking him to convey his sympathy to relatives of the dead and support for the injured survivors, and said he was ordering an investigation.
Putin also ordered an inquiry into a second disaster to strike Russia in less than 24 hours — a fire in which 62 people were killed overnight in a fire that swept a nursing home in the southern city of Kamyshevatskaya.
Nikolai Kultyn, an inspector with federal industrial regulator Rostekhnadzor, said there were no gas monitors where the pocket of methane gas had accumulated. He said the high number of deaths was likely due to the fact that many people were in a small area at the time of the blast.
“The explosion wasn’t so strong as to destroy the mine’s equipment,” Kultyn said in televised comments. “This was a coincidence of circumstances — so many people gathered so close to the epicenter.”
Human error?
In a statement, Rostekhnadzor said it was unlikely that faulty equipment had caused the explosion, and that investigators were looking into soil subsidence or human error as possible causes.
The agency also said mine operators had passed recent safety tests and the mine had all necessary operating licenses. Tuleyev ruled out human error, though he did not explain why.
Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu also said the mine had modern equipment.
The mine in the city of Novokuznetsk, about 1,850 miles east of Moscow, is operated by Yuzhkuzbassugol, an affiliate of Russian coal and steel company Evraz Group SA, which acquired a 50 percent stake in the company in 2005.
Labor union officials blamed the explosion in part on quota systems that encourage miners to work faster and harvest more coal, potentially leading to carelessness.
History of accidents
Russia’s mining industry fell into disrepair when government subsidies dried up after the Soviet collapse. At least 30 workers died in Russian mining accidents last year, including 25 killed in a fire at a Siberian gold mine.
In 2004, a blast at a mine on the outskirts of Novokuznetsk killed 47 workers, and in 1997, a methane explosion at a mine in the city killed 67.
The ITAR-Tass news agency said Monday’s explosion was the deadliest mine accident in the Kuzbass region in 60 years.
In recent years, conglomerates such as Evraz SA have bought up coal mines and similar enterprises and consolidated operations, selling raw and semi-processed material to steel smelters, electricity producers and other major industry. But some government officials have accused private companies of cutting corners on safety measures to save money.
Yuzhkuzbassugol is Russia’s leading producer of coking coal, with an output of 14 million tons in 2005, the Evraz Web site said.