Rescuers search for missing miners after Russian explosion

Rescuers are searching today for three miners missing after an explosion in Siberia’s coal-rich Kuzbass that killed at least 22 workers.

Yesterday’s blast also served to highlight the decrepit and hazardous conditions plaguing Russia’s coal industry.

A group of miners had been trying to keep a fire from spreading through the 20-year-old Yesaulskaya mine in the Kemerovo region when the blast erupted.

Five miners were taken to hospital, said Olga Raskova of the Kemerovo regional government press service. One was in a serious condition.

Thirty miners had been in the shaft when the blast happened at the mine, about 1,850 miles east of Moscow, the press service said.

A duty officer for the Kemerovo regional Emergency Situations Ministry said 22 miners were confirmed dead last night, and three were unaccounted for.

“A shock wave came and it hurled us all, thrown into somersaults like in a circus,” miner Andrei Pshenichnikov, his face covered with cuts, said from his hospital bed in footage broadcast on NTV television.

“Then I walked along the track, I don’t remember how long, I met security guards and they helped me.”

“As long as the last man is unaccounted for, only then when we will leave,” said Vasilly Korobeinikov, a mine foreman. “Time plays no role here. Only the search.”

Regional governor Aman Tuleyev said occasional blasts could still be heard in the shaft, hampering rescue efforts.

The blast was caused by a methane build-up, according to a preliminary investigation. The press service said that smoke had been registered in the shaft on Tuesday night and that coal extraction had been stopped. The workers in the shaft at the time of the blast were trying to erect bulkheads to isolate the fire sending out the smoke.

Accidents are common in the Russian coal industry which, since the breakup of the Soviet Union, has lacks the public or private funds to invest in safety equipment and technical upgrades.

The deadliest disaster last year was a methane blast that killed 47 miners in the Kuzbass in April, and 67 miners were killed in a mine explosion in the same region in 1997. The Yesaulskaya mine, however, had never had a big accident in its history, the regional government press service said.

The Kemerovo government has declared tomorrow a day of mourning and the dead miners’ families are to receive a minimum of 700,000 rubles (€20,000) from the regional government as compensation.