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Fifty-one people have been killed in Russia's worst mining disaster in a decade, prompting three days of mourning in Siberia's Kemerovo region.
The blast happened at the Listvyazhnaya mine when coal dust caught fire in a ventilation shaft on Thursday. Rescuers suffocated as they tried to reach dozens of missing miners. Officials said a methane gas explosion had filled the mine with smoke and the victims had died because of a lack of oxygen and high concentration of poisonous gas.
Relatives of dead and missing miners said warnings about growing levels of methane gas in the mine had gone unheeded. They said there had been a fire at the mine only 10 days earlier and miners had been frustrated that more was not done to improve safety. Russian mine accidents are not uncommon and in 2004, a methane gas explosion left 13 people dead. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59421319
In 2007, the region, known as Kuzbass, was the site of the worst mining accident since the collapse of the Soviet Union when an explosion at the Ulyanovskaya mine claimed the lives of more than 100 people. https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/russia-arrests-safety-inspectors-after-deadly-siberian-mining-disaster-2021-11-26/
As Western countries seek to decrease the use of fossil fuels, Russia, which accounts for more than 16% of the global coal trade, is the third-largest global exporter of coal, behind Australia and Indonesia. This year, Russia has increased production by 10%.
Experts say accidents such as the one at Listvyazhnaya are inevitable as Russia seeks to extract as much coal as it can before it gets phased out as the country gradually switches to renewable energy sources. Between 2007 and 2017, Russia increased its supply of coal by a factor of five, and its exports to China 24 times, according to the economy ministry. In recent months, Russia has been struggling to export its coal fast enough. The Baikal-Amur railway, which runs from eastern Siberia to Russia’s Far East, is being expanded as one of the country’s biggest ongoing infrastructure projects, with the aim of exporting more coal.
READ MORE: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/26/world/europe/mine-disaster-russia-safety.html