MOSCOW: Fifteenpeople were killed and another six still missing after an illegally built damcollapsed at a gold mine in a remote Siberian settlement on Saturday, in thelatest deadly accident to hit Russia. The dam on the Seiba River in theSiberian region of Krasnoyarsk burst and flooded several cabins where more than70 workers lived, Russian authorities said.
Icy and muddyfloodwaters hit the cabins located near the village of Shchetinkino at around6:00 am as the workers were resting. About 300 people, six helicopters and sixboats were involved in a search and rescue mission but the operation was to besuspended for the night, officials said. Officials said the dam had been builtin breach of safety rules and claimed that the authorities were not aware ofits existence.
PresidentVladimir Putin ordered officials to provide assistance to the victims andidentify the reasons for the accident, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov toldreporters. Investigators said they have opened a criminal probe into a breachof safety rules. Six people were still missing, Alyona Aleksishina, spokeswomanfor the regional branch of the emergencies ministry, told AFP. A total of 16victims received medical aid, and four of them were airlifted to a regionalhospital, authorities said.
A team of doctorsincluding a neurosurgeon were dispatchedto the scene from the city of Krasnoyarsk, which is located some 4,000kilometers east of Moscow. Footage broadcast on national television showed theremote settlement surrounded by the woods and mountains, the ground covered inlight snow. Overall, about 180 workers were thought to be living at the remotemining site.
Violation of'every single norm'
An unidentifiedworker from the mine told Govorit Moskva, a Moscow-based radio station, thatpeople had been caught by surprise. "People were sleeping, apparently theydid not even understand anything," he said. He described the accommodationas hastily built cabins, adding: "That says it all." The worker saidthere were four such dams in the area that had been built more than three yearsago, adding that smaller breaches had happened in the past.
The dam was builtin violation of "every single norm," the head of the local government,Yury Lapshin, said in televised remarks. Rains could have eroded the dam,officials said. The Krasnoyarsk region will observe a day of mourning onMonday. A number of top regional officials including governor Alexander Uss,prosecutors and inspectors went to the scene of the tragedy.
Russian Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova was overseeing the delivery of aid to the injured. The dam belonged to the Sibzoloto holding company which has not released any comment on the incident so far. Deadly accidents are relatively common in Russia because of lax safety rules, bad management and Soviet-era infrastructure. In 2009, 75 people were killed in a massive flood at Russia's biggest hydroelectric plant in the Khakassia region of Siberia. - AFP