(Gramoteïno) A three-day mourning began on Friday in the Kemerovo region of Siberia, the day after the death of 51 people, including five rescuers, in a coal mine accident followed by a rescue operation having turned into a drama.
A rescuer, presumed dead, was found alive Friday after spending the night in the rubble of the mine, reducing the toll initially set at 52 dead to 51, authorities said, citing a “miracle”.
Investigators on Thursday arrested those responsible for the mine – owned by an oligarch – accusing them of violations that led to the disaster, one of the worst in the past decade in the mining sector in Russia, regularly in mourning.
Relatives of victims were in tears on Friday morning near the entrance to the site, covered in snow and where many rescuers are still located, an AFP correspondent noted.
At around 8:30 a.m. local time (8:30 p.m. EST Wednesday) on Thursday, the alert was given after the presence of smoke in the Listviajnaya mine in Gramoteïno, in the mining and industrial region of Kemerovo.
According to local authorities, 285 people were underground at the time. The majority were rescued, but 46 others remained stranded several hundred meters deep.
” Until the end ”
A surviving minor, who did not give his name, told the Russia 24 channel that he was “saved” by rescuers in the middle of thick smoke. “I may have passed out, I don’t know how much time has passed. ”
“The visibility was bad, they grabbed me and they pulled me,” said another survivor, during a report broadcast on Friday by the same channel.
At nightfall on Thursday, the authorities announced that there were no survivors among those who remained underground, and that a team of six caving rescuers, missing, had also died.
On Friday morning, one of these rescuers was finally found alive. He spent the night buried, then rose to the surface alone, according to the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations.
The 51-year-old man, married with one child, is currently hospitalized with carbon monoxide poisoning, the ministry said in a statement.
“I think it’s a miracle. Our people have achieved a miracle, ”said Acting Minister of Emergency Situations Sergei Tchuprian, quoted in this press release.
The five presumed dead rescuers, aged 33 to 56, will be posthumously decorated with the Medal of Courage. “The miners, like the rescuers, fulfilled their duty to the end,” said Tchouprian.
According to an official of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the cause of the planned accident is a firedamp, an explosion caused by a mixture of oxygen and methane. The search had also been temporarily suspended Thursday because of the risk of explosion.
The governor of the region, Sergei Tsivilev, indicated that specialists would inject methane into the mine to lower the risk of further firedamp blasts.
Fifty people were hospitalized after the accident, according to the local health ministry.
“Negligence”
The Investigation Committee opened an investigation for “violation of safety standards” and announced Thursday evening the arrest of the mine manager, his deputy, as well as the person in charge of the area where the accident took place.
The site is owned by SDS-Ugol, one of Russia’s largest coal producers, owned by multimillionaire Mikhail Fediaev.
Friday, two officials of the inspection services of industrial sites (Rostekhnadzor) were targeted by another investigation for “negligence”.
Accidents in mines in Russia, as elsewhere in the former USSR, are often linked to laxity in the application of safety standards, poor management or dilapidated equipment dating back to Soviet times.
An accident in the Listviajnaya mine had already taken place in October 2004, when an explosion killed 13 people. According to Russian media, an explosion also killed five people there in 1981.
One of the worst disasters of this kind dates back to May 2010, when 91 people died in the Raspadskaya mine, also in the Kemerovo region.