Town mourns dead miners

2004-04-12 18:51

Osinniki, Russia - A Siberian region on Monday prepared to mourn the 47 miners who were reportedly killed by a weekend blast in a pit in the Kemerovo region, the latest deadly accident to hit Russia's mining industry.

"We have lifted to the surface 44 bodies and are still searching for three missing men," Viktor Zamiatin, a rescue official, told AFP by telephone.

"But there is practically no hope of finding them alive," he said.

Interfax reported on Monday evening that workers have found a 45th body, but that it would not be pulled to surface until Tuesday.

The first funerals are also to be held on Tuesday, for 19 of the miners who were killed on Saturday after an early-morning methane gas explosion some 600m beneath the surface of the Taizhina pit in the Kuzbass coal mining area.

President Vladimir Putin told a cabinet meeting to do everything possible for the victims' families.

The blast started a fire underground and caused the shaft to collapse in several places. Gas flooded the underground tunnels and the ventilation system stopped working.

A team of more than 300 workers, some from the nearby city of Krasnoyarsk, were drafted in to help the rescue effort, which continued through the night.

Wearing gas masks to protect themselves from the carbon dioxide in the air, they were forced to approach from an adjacent mine because of the damage to the shaft.

"It was impossible to survive in there," said one of the rescuers who emerged with a blackened face from the mineshaft.

Until Saturday evening, some voices and sounds could be heard from underground, but since then it had gone silent, another rescuer told AFP, adding that there had been no contact with the missing miners.

Six hospitalised

Out of 59 miners in the mine at the time of the accident, rescuers managed to get six to safety, suffering from burns and other injuries. Three had to be carried out on stretchers. All were hospitalised.

Another six miners at the top of the shaft escaped unscathed.

The governor of the Kemerovo region, Aman Tuleyev, went to the scene at the town of Osinniki to comfort the miners' families and oversee the rescue operation.

He declared Tuesday a day of mourning as prosecutors opened a criminal investigation for negligence.

Nearly all the workforce of 650 at the Taizhina pit come from the village of the same name, where the coalmine is the main employer, and the nearby small town of Osinniki.

The Russian coal mining industry, largely unprofitable and suffering from under-funding, is notoriously accident-prone, with several fatal incidents over the past months.

Putin has called for safer technology to be introduced into the country's mines, while high-ranking officials have also mulled closing up to 15 pits over the next two years.

- AFP