Translated material
One in a million
Another mine accident claims the lives of eight miners
Miners are dying again in Russia. Following the terrible accidents at the Ulyanovskaya and Yubileinaya mines in the Kemerovo region, which claimed almost one and a half hundred lives in the spring, trouble came to Vorkuta. On Monday evening, at least eight miners were killed in an explosion at the Komsomolskaya mine, owned by the Vorkutaugol company. The fate of two more remains unknown.Only due to the fact that the epicenter of the explosion was located away from the main workings, there were no mass casualties. Neither the technical protective equipment installed at the mine nor the massive inspections carried out by Rostekhnadzor after the sad events in Kuzbass could prevent the tragedy. The country still pays for every million tons of coal with the life of a miner, and it is not yet possible to change this statistics.
Moreover, by the end of this year, it is possible that a new mortality record will be set in the coal industry . The number of miners who died in just the past six months has already “overshadowed” the similar indicators of several previous years combined. At the same time, over the same six months, the authorities have already exhausted the entire “set” of measures at their disposal, with the help of which it would be possible to “turn” the situation - wholesale inspections of enterprises throughout the country, bringing the perpetrators (survivors) to criminal liability, suspension of activities enterprises through the courts, etc. As a result, the only possible explanation for everything that happened is that the state control system simply cannot cope with its functions.
The accident was reported to the control panel of the Komsomolskaya mine on June 25 at 18.40. According to eyewitnesses, there was an explosion and smoke in the conveyor drift 722-c of the Moshchny formation at a depth of 835 meters. At the time of the accident, there were two shifts in the mine - a total of 277 people. 18 miners worked directly at the emergency site. According to safety regulations, work in the mine was immediately stopped, and the evacuation of miners began. By 22.45, 264 people were raised from underground to the surface. A little later, mountain rescue units rescued three victims from the rubble. One of them, as rescuers put it, “was born in a shirt” - the people who carried him out of the mine considered him dead, but on the surface the man suddenly began to breathe and was immediately sent to intensive care.
After this, they were no longer lifted alive from the mine. Yesterday morning the bodies of seven dead miners were found, and by evening another one was found. The fate of the two remained unknown until evening. But the mine rescuers working underground believed that, given the scale of the destruction, they had little chance of survival.
According to the acting The head of the Pechora interregional department of Rostechnadzor, Pyotr Naidenko, appointed chairman of the commission to investigate the technical causes of the accident at Komsomolskaya, yesterday rescuers and mine workers restored the power supply to the mine damaged by the explosion, and ensured the supply of air and water to emergency areas. “The epicenter of the explosion was located at a depth of approximately 835 meters in a capital working, where coal mining was stopped seven years ago. The space was used for the transportation of rock and the movement of diesel locomotives. All victims were there according to their staffing schedule. As a result of the accident, an area of about 400 meters was littered. However, most likely, this will not be critical for a mine where the total length of the workings reaches 250 km. The site can be restored. It's much worse that people died. These losses are irreparable,” Mr. Naidenko told Vremya Novostei.
As for the Komsomolskaya mine itself, one of the deepest in Russia, it is considered dangerous not only due to methane emissions (like, for example, the Kuzbass mines), but also due to the so-called rock burst. This phenomenon is accompanied by a spontaneous ejection of rock from coal seams (pieces of coal and stone are sometimes thrown out 50-60 m) and the release of a huge amount of methane. According to Mr. Naidenko, the only danger that did not exist at Komsomolskaya was spontaneous combustion, a phenomenon rarely encountered at other mines.
Inspections at Komsomolskaya were carried out both scheduled (the mine has an “attached” Rostechnadzor inspector, who checked hazardous areas according to his schedule) and unscheduled. After the tragedies in Kuzbass, Komsomolskaya was last intensively checked in May. “Of course, there were violations; all mines operate with certain violations. But they did not stop production and apply draconian measures, since everything was eliminated quickly,” said Mr. Naidenko. A gas protection system was also installed at the mine - the domestic Mikon-1R, a very good system, according to Mr. Naidenko. However, it is not yet clear whether it recorded the release of methane.
Mr. Naidenko considered it premature to talk about possible causes of the emergency. According to him, rescuers must first remove all the bodies, and only after that the commission, which he heads, will begin work directly in the mine. This time, the head of Rostekhnadzor, Konstantin Pulikovsky, was also restrained in his statements, whose careless statements in Kuzbass led to a scandal that ended in a trial with Governor Tuleyev. Then the head of Rostekhnadzor said that the authorities of the Kemerovo region allegedly knew about massive and deliberate violations of safety regulations at the Ulyanovskaya and Yubileynaya mines, and Mr. Tuleyev in response accused his opponent’s subordinates of widespread bribery. Yesterday, Mr. Pulikovsky listed all possible options as possible causes of the explosion: “It could be a methane explosion, a rock burst, or a human factor.”
By the way, because of the accident at Komsomolskaya, it seems that the conflict between Mr. Pulikovsky and Governor Tuleyev has also subsided. Yesterday, the head of Kuzbass announced that he had addressed the Russian government with a request to consider strengthening the role of Rostekhnadzor in matters of labor safety for miners.
The republican commission, created by the head of the Komi Republic Vladimir Torlopov, who interrupted his working trip to Kaliningrad due to the tragedy, also intends to conduct its investigation into the accident at Komsomolskaya. However, the final conclusions, as usual in such cases, will be made by the prosecutor’s office, which has opened a criminal case into the accident under the article of the Criminal Code “violation of safety rules during mining, construction and other work, which through negligence resulted in the death of two or more people.”
By the way, this emergency at Komsomolskaya is not the first. Over the past two years, personnel have been evacuated here twice. In 2006 - due to smoke, and more recently, in February of this year, due to an electrical cable fire. Both times there were no casualties.
The Komsomolskaya mine is the second most powerful in the Pechora coal basin. It was launched in 1976. It is one of the deepest mines in Russia - some of its workings are located at depths of about 1100 meters. According to experts, coal reserves in the Komsomolskaya mine field will last until 2040. Now Komsomolskaya is part of the Vorkutaugol company, the largest shareholder of which is OJSC Severstal. Vorkutaugol includes six operating coal enterprises - Severnaya, Vorkutinskaya, Komsomolskaya, Zapolyarnaya, Vorgashorskaya and the Yunyaginsky open-pit mine, where coal is mined by open-pit mining.
In recent years, several accidents have occurred at the Vorkutaugol mines. On January 13, 2002, five people were killed as a result of a methane explosion at Vorkutinskaya. On August 3, 2004, a rock collapse occurred at the Severnaya mine. At the time of the accident, there were 154 miners in the mine, 149 were rescued, five died.