Fire stops Ukrainian mine rescue

UKRAINE:A raging fire 1,000m (3,280ft) underground prevented rescue workers yesterday from reaching survivors of a methane explosion that killed at least 70 Ukrainian coal miners.

Hope was dwindling last night that anyone else would emerge alive from the vast Zasyadko pit, which seemed set to become notorious as the site of Ukraine's worst post-Soviet mine disaster as flames and fallen rock hampered emergency crews.

Some 30 miners were still unaccounted for, suggesting that 100 of the 456 men who were working at the time of the blast may have died. This would take the death toll past that of a disaster in 2000 at another mine in eastern Ukraine which claimed 80 lives.

"This is a great tragedy and we must draw the necessary lessons from it," said Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko after visiting the mine in the city of Donetsk and declaring a national day of mourning.

"The Donetsk tragedy poses a challenge not only to Ukraine's coal industry but to all political leaders," he said, after earlier accusing the government of failing to improve safety standards at the country's huge and often dilapidated mines.

Mihailo Volninets, a trade union leader who is part of a government commission investigating the disaster, said rescue officials faced a terrible dilemma - how to stop air feeding the subterranean fire without completely sealing the mine and burying those inside.

Relatives of missing miners forced their way into management offices to demand information on the rescue effort, amid renewed public anger at the dire safety record of Ukraine's mines and at a pay system based on the amount of coal produced, which encourages workers to ignore problems and take risks.

"Coalmine accidents happen in Ukraine more often than even in China," said Mr Volninets. "It is all because of lack of finance and bad management; nobody cares about miners."

Some miners at the Zasyadko pit, which employs some 10,000 people and produces up to 10,000 tonnes a day, earn more than €600 a month, which is about three times the national average.

But many said they were now scared to return to Ukraine's coal face, where on average almost 300 miners have died each year since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

"Why should I do this? said one miner, Nikolai. "I live alone with my daughter. What happens if I end up getting killed?"