Causes for Killer Mine Blast in Bulgaria Clear

Crime | March 10, 2007, Saturday // 00:00

Bulgaria's labour inspection have already made a pretty clear picture of what happened in the Monday mine blast that took the life of one worker and left three others in critical condition.

We have talked to many workers and seen a lot of papers and instructions, proving that controlled explosions took place in the mine's 51st gallery, the inspection's head Totyo Mladenov has said. He explained that they found out that the ventilators of the 52nd gallery weren't working in the weekend before the accident and that once workers started digging on Monday, there were repairs going on in the 52nd gallery.

Three workers went to the 51st gallery to turn on the transporter for coal extraction although no one was supposed to go there. They obviously couldn't extract enough coal from gallery 52 and went to the other one to get the amount necessary to wrap up the shift, Mladenov explained.

One of the miners said that he heard the transporter go on in gallery 51 and the blast right afterwards. We have written testimony, we have papers, we have quotas, so we have a clear idea now of what happened, Mladenov said.

The Oranovo mine blast plunged the south-western Bulgarian town of Simitli in mourning. Zhivko Serafimov, the worker who died Thursday, was buried on Friday.

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