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Collapse ‘threat’ halts hunt for survivors of Russia high-rise blast
MOSCOW, Jan 1, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Russian rescuers have been forced to
temporarily halt the search for dozens of missing people in the rubble of a
collapsed high-rise apartment block as the building risked crumbling further,
officials said Tuesday, with the incident claiming at least seven lives.
Part of the 10-storey building collapsed following a gas explosion on
Monday morning in the industrial city of Magnitogorsk, nearly 1,700
kilometres (1,050 miles) east of Moscow in the Ural mountains.
The Soviet-era block was home to around 1,100 people. The blast completely
destroyed 35 flats while 10 more were damaged. Residents left homeless were
evacuated to a nearby school.
Battling freezing temperatures, rescuers had worked through the night
combing through debris and trying to stabilise the remaining walls.
But on Tuesday morning, the head of Russia’s emergencies ministry, Yevgeny
Zinichev, said the operations had to be temporarily halted.
There is a “real threat of part of the building collapsing”, Zinichev
said.
“It’s impossible to continue working in such conditions.”
He added that efforts to stabilise the walls could take up to 24 hours,
with emergency workers dismantling the building from the outside while
hanging from cranes.
After an all-night search, officials said Tuesday morning they had found
seven bodies, all of them adults. Another 37 people remain unaccounted for.
Temperatures overnight in Magnitogorsk fell to around minus 27 degrees
celsius (minus 16 degrees Fahrenheit), TASS news agency reported.
The regional governor Boris Dubrovsky announced a day of mourning on
January 2, with flags lowered and entertainment events cancelled, as the
disaster toll set a sombre mood in Russia, where New Year’s Eve celebrations
are the biggest annual festivities.
President Vladimir Putin on Monday rushed to the scene, where the blast
left hundreds of residents homeless in freezing temperatures.
“It is in the character of our people, despite New Year’s festivities, to
remember to think of the dead and wounded at this moment,” a grim-looking
Putin said.
National television showed rescue workers searching through mangled heaps
of concrete and metal.
“I went out to have a cigarette at quarter-to-six,” a local man told
Russian television. “There was a blast and a wave of fire… then people
started running out.”
Other witnesses said the explosion was strong enough to shatter the
windows of nearby buildings.
“I woke up and felt myself falling. The walls were gone. My mother was
screaming and my son had been buried,” said another witness.
Located in the mineral-rich southern Urals region, Magnitogorsk, with a
population of more than 400,000 people, is home to one of the country’s
largest steel producers.
Investigators have opened a criminal probe into the accident, with the FSB
security service confirming the blast was the result of a gas explosion.
Such deadly gas explosions are relatively common in Russia where much of
the infrastructure dates back to the Soviet era and safety requirements are
often ignored.
BSS/AFP/SSS/1821 hrs