A three-day mourning began on Friday, November 26 in the Kemerovo region of Siberia, the day after the death of 52 people, including six rescuers, in an accident in a coal mine followed by a rescue operation having turned to drama.
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Investigators on Thursday arrested those responsible for the mine - owned by an oligarch - accusing them of violations that led to the disaster, one of the worst in the past decade in the mining sector in Russia, regularly in mourning.
Thursday morning, around 08:30 am local (01:30 GMT), the alert was given after the presence of smoke in the Listviajnaïa mine, in Gramoteïno, in the Kemerovo region, where many coal mines are located.
According to local authorities, 285 people were underground at the time.
The majority were then rescued, but 46 others remained stranded several hundred meters deep.
The deceased rescuers, decorated posthumously
A surviving minor, who did not give his name, told the Russia 24 channel that he was "
saved
" by rescuers in the middle of thick smoke. “
I may have passed out, I don't know how much time has passed.
"
The visibility was bad, they grabbed me and they pulled me
," said another miraculous miner, during a report broadcast on Friday by the same channel.
At nightfall on Thursday, authorities finally announced that there were no survivors among those left underground, and that a team of six caving rescuers, missing, had also died.
On Friday morning, the acting Minister of Emergency Situations, Alexandre Tchouprian, indicated on television that a minor had just been found alive, without further details.
The deceased rescuers, aged 33 to 56, will be posthumously decorated with the Medal of Courage, the Ministry of Emergency Situations announced on Friday.
"
The miners, like the rescuers, fulfilled their duty to the end,
" Tchouprian said in a statement.
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According to an official of the Public Prosecutor's Office, quoted by Russian news agencies, the cause of the accident currently envisaged is a firedamp, an explosion caused by a mixture of oxygen and methane.
Search operations had also been suspended Thursday because of the risk of explosion.
The governor of the region, Sergei Tsivilev, told the press that specialists were going to inject methane into the mine to reduce the risk of new firedamps.
Fifty people were hospitalized after the accident, according to the local health ministry.
"Violation of safety standards"
The Investigation Committee opened an investigation for "
violation of safety standards
" and announced Thursday evening the arrest of the mine manager, his deputy, as well as the person in charge of the area where the accident took place. The site is owned by SDS-Ugol, one of Russia's largest coal producers, owned by millionaire Mikhail Fediaev.
Friday, two officials of the inspection services of industrial sites (Rostekhnadzor), were targeted by another investigation for "
negligence
".
"
It's a great tragedy,
" President Vladimir Putin said on television on Thursday.
Accidents in mines in Russia, as elsewhere in the former USSR, are often linked to laxity in the application of safety standards, poor management or dilapidated equipment dating back to Soviet times.
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An accident in the Listviajnaya mine had already taken place in October 2004, when a methane explosion killed 13 people.
According to Russian media, an explosion also killed five people there in 1981, during Soviet times.
In May 2010, an accident left 91 dead and more than a hundred injured in the Raspadskaya mine, also in the Kemerovo region.
Beyond the human toll, sometimes heavy, some accidents draw attention to the practices of the Russian mining industry, often to the detriment of the environment.
