Translated material
Explosive City
Elimination of the consequences of a fire at the Ulyanovsk arsenal led to a new tragedy
Eight people were killed in another unauthorized explosion of ammunition that occurred yesterday afternoon on the territory of the 31st Navy Arsenal in Ulyanovsk. This tragedy became a kind of second series of emergency situations that occurred there on November 13. Then, at the 31st arsenal, as a result of a fire, several tens of tons of shells exploded, which led to destruction and caused real panic in the city.Yesterday's explosion occurred at a time when sappers searching for unexploded shells after a fire at the arsenal were loading them into a vehicle for removal for disposal. This time there were no consequences in Ulyanovsk. Disposal of highly dangerous ammunition at the arsenal by detonation continued throughout the past week, and local residents have already become accustomed to single explosions. That is why citizens and local authorities only learned about the new emergency from the military, because they mistook the new, emergency rupture for a planned one. As a result, no bystanders were injured - all the dead were military personnel, and the fragments did not scatter outside the closed area, as before.
However, a new incident at the 31st arsenal may well cause political consequences. Obviously, it threatens to attract closer attention from the leadership to the local military, who were unable to ensure the security of not only the arsenal itself, but also the operation to eliminate the previous emergency.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, a new emergency at the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “31st Arsenal of the Navy” occurred at about 14.30, when servicemen from the arsenal’s demining group “on the technical territory” were loading unexploded shells after a recent fire into a Ural vehicle. For unknown reasons, one of the shells detonated, after which “there was an explosion of other ammunition loaded into the vehicle for subsequent transportation to the liquidation site.” However, sources in local law enforcement agencies unofficially named the cause of the explosion: it allegedly occurred at the moment when the already loaded truck started moving, and one of the shells could have exploded from the concussion.
As a result of the incident, according to the Ministry of Defense, eight people died - two officers and six contract soldiers. Two more were injured. “The wounded have been operated on, and, according to doctors, their lives are not in danger,” the Ministry of Defense said. According to preliminary data, as a result of the new explosion, residential buildings in the Zavodsky district, on the territory of which the arsenal is located, were not damaged.
As already reported, on the afternoon of November 13, a fire occurred on the territory of military unit No. 34236, where the Navy arsenal has been located since 1941, which provoked the explosion of about 40 tons of various sea and land ammunition. As a result of the emergency, two servicemen were killed, 60 people were injured, and more than a thousand citizens were evacuated. The resulting fire, whose area was about 10 thousand square meters. m, it was possible to extinguish it only after a few hours. The explosions at the warehouse also stopped only after dark. Serious damage was caused to the city's infrastructure - 220 houses partially lost their glass, 20 kindergartens, nine schools and other structures were damaged. Sappers found unexploded shells not only on the territory of the arsenal, but also on the streets of the city. According to preliminary data (the investigation into the causes of the previous emergency is still ongoing), the fire began in the workshops where they were disposing of ammunition - first, wagons with gunpowder extracted from ammunition caught fire, after which unassembled shells began to detonate.
As the Investigative Committee reported yesterday, the Military Investigation Department began a pre-investigation investigation into the new explosion. “Under the leadership of the Deputy Prosecutor of the Volga-Ural Military District, Pyotr Nikolaev, investigators will have to establish whether safety precautions were violated when working with explosive objects, and the circle of people involved in the new tragedy,” the military prosecutor’s office of the district reported.
A new tragedy in Ulyanovsk broke out just a day before the visit of the country's President Dmitry Medvedev to the city, who is expected to hold a meeting of the State Council Presidium on Transport Development here, discuss the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and officially open a new 24-kilometer bridge across Volga, which will become the largest in Europe. However, it has already become such - the unofficial opening of this bridge took place on November 13 due to a previous emergency at the 31st arsenal. Then the city authorities were forced to close traffic on the existing bridge, which fell into the affected area of flying shells and shrapnel. And in order to avoid panic and transport collapse, the authorities were forced for some time to open traffic ahead of schedule on the new bridge, which President Medvedev was officially to present.