Underground explosions killed 30 people and trapped 60 more in Russia’s worst mine disaster in three years, emergency officials said yesterday as they raced against rising floodwaters.
Nearly 300 miners escaped or were rescued after the methane blasts at the weekend, but the death toll at the Raspadskaya coal mine, 3,000km east of Moscow, rose from 12 overnight as more bodies were found underground, the ministry said in a statement.
Time was running out to rescue people from areas of the mine where anti-flooding systems had failed, Russian Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu said.
PHOTO: EPA
“We have 48 hours,” Russian news agencies reported him as saying.
The toll makes the disaster the deadliest in a Russian mine since May 2007, when 39 died as a result of a methane explosion at the Yubileynaya mine, which is also located in the coal-rich Kemerovo region of Western Siberia.
A criminal investigation has been opened into possible safety violations, the prosecutor general’s office said.
More than 350 miners were underground when the first explosion rocked the mine just before midnight on Saturday and dozens were trapped by the blast.
Nineteen rescuers were themselves trapped underground when a second blast early on Sunday forced emergency teams to halt their efforts.
The bodies of 17 rescuers were found on Sunday night after a fall in methane levels allowed colleagues to re-enter the mine. Sixty-five people are being treated for injuries, the emergencies ministry said.
More than 500 people were involved in the rescue effort yesterday, the emergencies ministry said.
It said ventilation and electricity had been restored to the mine.
“The situation is clearly serious,” Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in a televised video conference with rescue leaders on Sunday. “We need to do everything possible to save the people.”
Rising floodwaters were complicating the rescue effort. Every hour, 2,000m³ of water was pouring into two areas of the mine where at least 13 people were trapped, news agencies reported, citing the emergencies ministry.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
RSS