Rescuers have found a survivor in a Siberian coal mine where dozens of miners are presumed dead after a devastating methane explosion, a top local official said yesterday.
Kemerovo Oblast Governor Sergei Tsivilyov wrote on the messaging app Telegram that the survivor was found in the Listvyazhnaya mine in southwestern Siberia.
“He is being taken to the hospital,” he wrote.
Photo: AFP
Russian Acting Minister of Emergency Situations Alexander Chupriyan said that the man found in the mine was Alexander Zakovryashin, a rescuer who had been presumed dead.
“I can consider it a miracle,” Chupriyan said.
Zakovryashin was conscious when rescuers found him and has been hospitalized with carbon monoxide poisoning of moderate severity, emergency officials said.
The authorities on Thursday confirmed 14 fatalities — 11 miners were found dead and three rescuers died later while searching for others who were trapped at a remote section of the mine.
Six more bodies were recovered yesterday morning, and 31 people remain missing.
Tsivilyov said that finding other survivors at this point was highly unlikely.
Hours after a methane gas explosion and fire filled the mine with toxic fumes on Thursday, rescuers were forced to halt the search because of a buildup of methane and carbon monoxide from the fire.
A total of 239 people were rescued from the mine, of whom 63 had as of yesterday sought medical assistance, Kemerovo officials said.
Authorities put the death toll at 52 on Thursday evening, saying that there was no chance of finding any more survivors.
Rescuing Zakovryashin brings that down to 51.
It appears to be the deadliest mine accident in Russia since 2010, when two methane explosions and a fire killed 91 people at the Raspadskaya mine in the same region. In 2016, 36 miners were killed in a series of methane explosions in a coal mine in Russia’s far north.
In the wake of the incident, authorities analyzed the safety of the country’s 58 coal mines and declared 20 of them potentially unsafe.
Media reports said that the Listvyazhnaya mine was not among them, even though a methane explosion in the mine killed 13 people in 2014.
Russia’s top independent news site, Meduza, reported that authorities this year suspended the work of certain sections of the mine nine times.
Inspections in April found more than 100 rule contraventions, including breaches of fire safety rules.
Law enforcement officials yesterday said that miners had complained about the high level of methane in the mine.
Regional officials have declared three days of mourning.
The Russian Investigative Committee said it has launched a criminal probe into the fire over breaches of safety regulations.
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