Translated material
Explosion theory
The cause of the tragedy at the Ulyanovskaya mine is unclear
Groups of Emergency Situations Ministry employees and mine rescuers continued to arrive in Novokuznetsk all day yesterday from different parts of the country to participate in the rescue operation at the Ulyanovskaya mine , where more than 200 miners were trapped underground on Monday afternoon as a result of a strong explosion. According to official data, a total of 202 people were in the mine at the time of the emergency, including almost the entire mine management and an employee of the British corporation. In the first hours of the search operation, only 93 of them were saved. Since Monday evening, only the bodies of the dead were lifted from the mine, and a day later their number reached 107. The fate of two more people remained unclear. Their search was carried out in the most inaccessible faces of the mine, which were flooded with water after an explosion and rock collapse.Today at nine o'clock at the site of the tragedy a meeting of the operational headquarters is scheduled, chaired by the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Sergei Shoigu. At the meeting, preliminary results of prospecting work at the mine should be summed up. It is assumed that the first versions of the causes of the disaster may be voiced there. Yesterday, the prosecutor's office already stated that "the explosion occurred during an equipment check" and that "mining rules were violated." However, for now, experts call these conclusions preliminary, especially since they directly contradict the statements of Rostekhnadzor, which is conducting its investigation. The commission of this department, on the contrary, did not find any visible technological causes of the accident.
In total, more than 300 rescuers and mine rescuers were involved in the rescue operation at the Ulyanovskaya mine yesterday, including from Moscow, Krasnoyarsk, Chita, Tula and Sakhalin. Most of the dead miners were found on Tuesday night. In the middle of the day, it became known that the body of one miner had been discovered, and in the late afternoon another dead man was found.
Among the dead, as has already been precisely established, is a representative of the British company IMC, British citizen Ian Malcoln Robertson. He headed a project for an international audit firm to estimate coal reserves and went down to the mine face to personally inspect the mine.
In addition to the Briton, 20 people from among the leaders of Ulyanovskaya also died. The fate of the four miners remains unclear. Yesterday in the afternoon, messages began to appear from mine rescuers engaged in their search that some of the drifts were flooded with water and divers would be involved in the work.
Of the 93 people rescued from the Ulyanovskaya mines, three miners remained in the Novokuznetsk clinical hospital yesterday - Alexey Loboda, Valery Fomenko and Ilya Kokorin. One of the miners has a concussion, the other two are in intensive care with traumatic brain injuries, rib fractures and first-degree burns. However, according to doctors, the lives of patients are not in danger.
As for finding out the causes of the accident, yesterday experts were unable to give even a more or less approximate answer. According to one version, a gas-methane mixture exploded. On the day of the accident, a new degassing unit was supposed to be launched at Ulyanovskaya. This is actually why the mine management went down there. According to some reports, the explosion occurred just at the moment it was turned on. However, a company representative confirmed this information only partially: “We planned to launch a new degassing unit on that day. But we don’t see a direct connection with the explosion.”
The Ulyanovskaya mine, according to a representative of Yuzhkuzbassugol, is one of the most modern in Kuzbass. It was put into operation in 2002 and is equipped with modern equipment made in the UK and Germany, as well as the latest gas control installation. Before the methane explosion, this system, as it turned out, recorded the concentration of a large amount of gas, after which the explosion occurred. But the time interval between the alarm and the explosion was so short that no one in the mine had time to react to it. In this regard, some experts continue to insist that the primary explosion was not methane, but coal dust, as a result of which a ground collapse and methane release have already occurred.
Meanwhile, the Rostekhnadzor commission, conducting its investigation, based on preliminary data, did not identify any visible technological causes of the accident. “All the equipment is new, and it was constantly under the control of Rostekhnadzor inspectors. The last time inspectors from the department descended into this mine was on March 6,” reported the Rostechnadzor press service for the Siberian Federal District.
A representative of the prosecutor's office also voiced his version of the reasons for the explosion yesterday. Senior Assistant Prosecutor of the Kemerovo Region Alexey Bugaets stated that “the article under which the criminal case was initiated is a violation of safety rules during mining operations. There is a basic version: the rules for conducting mining operations were violated.” The prosecutor did not specify which rules were violated, and the corresponding message on the website of the Prosecutor General’s Office states: “It was established that the explosion occurred during an equipment check. Presumably, methane or coal dust exploded, causing the roof to collapse.”
Yesterday, employees of the regional prosecutor's office and the Novokuznetsk district prosecutor's office, headed by the prosecutor of the Kemerovo region, Alexander Khalezin, worked at the scene all day. The investigation team was divided in half. One part works in the morgues, where the identification procedure takes place, the other - directly at the scene of the incident, interviewing eyewitnesses and inspecting the mine area. As of Tuesday evening, 24 dead had been identified.
The first funeral of the miners is scheduled to take place on March 22 in Novokuznetsk, where most of the dead miners lived. According to a representative of the press service of Yuzhkuzbassugol, the company covered all the costs of organizing and holding the funeral. The families of the dead miners, as reported by the head of the information department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Irina Andrianova, will receive compensation in the amount of 1.3 to 2 million rubles. In addition, the Yuzhkuzbassugol company announced that it will allocate additional funds for the purchase of housing to the needy families of deceased miners and will cover the costs of educating children.