Ukraine seems to have entered an inexplicable or just fatal black period of manmade and natural disasters. Misfortunes are coming in like a flood. A gas explosion in Dnipropetrovsk. An environmental catastrophe in the Strait of Kerch. And now a Sunday night 1,078-m-deep burst at the Zasiadko coal mine in Donetsk, which claimed 70 human lives. As these lines are being written, 30 miners are still missing and 28 have been hospitalized with injuries of various degree, one of them being in a grave condition.
Donbas and Ukraine have gone into mourning. Miners’ families in all the coal-producing regions, who are “used to death,” are in a most profound shock. Let us face it: tomorrow a similar woe may befall them, too.
Meanwhile, an all-out effort is being made to find and, if possible, rescue the miners cut off by the blaze. Experts say that this disaster, caused by the explosion of an air- methane mixture, is one the gravest in Ukraine over the past few years. Commissioned in 1958, the Zasiadko mine is considered dangerous because it can show sudden blowouts of coal and gas and contains explosive coal powder. Its seams may produce sudden breakthroughs of methane and easily catch fire. The hazardous longwall was examined 12 days before the explosion, but no excessive concentration of methane was found.
Sixty five miner rescuing units and 21 resuscitation and anti-shock brigades have been working at the place of the tragedy since the early Sunday morning. But the accident was so grave that, as Mykola Maleiev, chief of the Donets regional Mine Supervision Authority, said, they only managed to put out the fire on Sunday evening. According to Vice-Premier Andrii Kluiev, rescue work is being hindered by a sudden increase of temperature in the ventilation shaft of the3 13th eastern longwall along which the rescuers are moving.
Naturally, the same day saw the formation of a special governmental commission headed by Vice- Premire Kluiev and composed of Serhii Tulub, Minister for Coal Mining; Serhii Storchak, chairman of the State Mining Supervision Committee; and Nestor Shufrych, Minister for the Emergencies.
On the same day the mine was visited by Prime Minister Viktor Yanulovych and on Monday by President Viktor Yushchenko. The mine’s honorary manager Yukhym Zviahelsky, MP, could not come over because he was in hospital.The miners’ families were promised a compensation: they will receive 100,000 for each killed person. This is the current price of a miner. On Sunday, UAU 7.5 million were allotted for eliminating the consequences of the accident. It was planned yesterday to earmark another 6 million. Kluiev said that the miners’ families would begin to receive aid on Wednesday.
The US has also offered assistance in conducting a rescuing operation at the Zasiadko mine. The US Ambassador to Ukraine, William Taylor, stated, “I got in touch with Ukraine’s government and offered to supply resources at our disposal, which could contribute to the rescue operation. We are praying for those affected by this tragedy and the gallant rescuers.” On behalf of the embassy and the American people, the ambassador expressed condolences to the people of Ukraine and the families which have lost their kith and kin in this accident.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent a telegram with condolence to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko. President of the Development of Ukraine Charity Foundation and Shakhtar soccer club Rynat Akhmetov assured that he would not leave “any family that had come to grief without support.” The Shakhtar soccer club and Development of Ukraine Foundation have allotted 10 million hryvnias for the victims.
Although the most important thing is now to save miners who may be still live (some resources report that number of victims can increase to a hundred of people) and soothe (there are no other appropriate words in the language) in some way the grief that has suddenly fallen upon the people (with the help of psychological aid, money and simple human sympathy). But the questions will inevitably emerge, whom to blame and what to do in order to prevent similar things from happening in the future.
In this connection to held a martyrology of the mining victims would not be out of place. Within the period starting from 1999 four big accidents have happened on the mine of Zasiadko. On May 24 1999, 50 miners died there and 40 others were traumatized as a result of methane blowout. On Aug. 2001, 65 people died as a result of an explosion: 45 of them- immediately, 10 people died in the hospital and 10 people were missing. On July 31 2002, 20 miners died and two people were traumatized. On Sept. 20 2006, 13 miners died as a result of an accident.
It is reported that today the list of mines in Donetsk, Luhansk and Lviv oblasts to have a special regime of the State Supervision organization is being defined. This is a helter-skelter measure, as the saying goes. But it seems that this regime will always work in dangerous mines.
