Four people were killed and nearly 70 were unaccounted for after a gas explosion yesterday rocked a residential building in Russia, leaving hundreds without a home in freezing temperatures on New Year’s Eve.
An entire section of the 12-story residential building collapsed when a gas explosion tore through the high-rise in the industrial city of Magnitogorsk, nearly 1,700km east of Moscow in the Ural mountains.
Officials said that the fate of nearly 70 people was unclear, with police working to locate their whereabouts.
Photo: AP
They warned that two more sections of the high-rise on Karl Marx Street were in danger of collapsing.
National television broadcast footage of the mangled heaps of concrete as hundreds of rescue workers combed the debris in temperatures of minus-18oC.
In a sign of the seriousness of the situation, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Minister of Emergencies Situation Yevgeny Zinichev and Minister of Health Veronika Skvortsova to travel to Magnitogorsk to personally oversee the rescue operation.
The Soviet-era high-rise was built in 1973 and was home to about 1,100 people. The residents have been evacuated.
A total of 110 people were registered as residents of the affected section of the building, regional authorities said.
Sixteen of them have been evacuated and another 15 were not home at the time of the blast.
Deadly gas explosions are relatively common in Russia, where much of the infrastructure dates back to the Soviet era and safety requirements are often ignored.
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