81 killed in coal mine explosion near Krasnodon (03/19/00)

81 killed in coal mine explosion near Krasnodon

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - In the largest calamity to hit Ukraine since independence, 81 miners were killed on March 11 after a methane explosion tore through the Barakova mine in the eastern Ukrainian city of Krasnodon, again underscoring the dire situation of Ukraine's coal mining industry.

Preliminary reports suggest that the blast in the Luhansk Oblast was a result of gross violations of safety requirements and may be directly tied to welding operations that were taking place as the miners worked.

At the time of the explosion, 91 miners were in the area, while 277 workers were in the mine. Seven people remain hospitalized with burns and trauma injuries, four of them critically.

President Leonid Kuchma immediately canceled a trip to Poland and Prime Minister Viktor Yuschenko delayed his visit to the United States to attend mass funerals that took place March 13-14, which were declared national days of mourning.

President Kuchma, speaking in Lviv on his way back to Kyiv from a short vacation in the Carpathian Mountains, said the situation in the coal industry needs to be examined and revamped.

"We have no right to allow what is going on in the coal industry to continue," said President Kuchma, according to Interfax-Ukraine.

The president announced the formation of a high-level investigative committee to be headed by Prime Minister Yuschenko and called for hearings in Parliament on the question of the closing of mines. He warned that those debates must not take on a political tone, but must offer different opinions "from various social and economic viewpoints."

Methane explosions have become a common occurrence in the eastern mining regions of Ukraine as poor safety conditions and little money for renovations have worsened the already poor working environment that miners face.

Recent tight government budgets have failed to provide the state mining industry the money it needs to ensure the safety of the workers and provide the machinery they need to work.

Conditions in private mines are not much better. Although more money is available, corruption and graft have made regulation of the mines haphazard. Generally, little of the profit is reinvested into the mines, especially because most of the pits are almost bereft of quality, usable coal and coming to the end of their sustainability.

Even though coal industry workers are among the few in Ukraine who regularly strike to protest the government's inability to pay wages and pensions and improve their working conditions, their demonstrations usually result only in short-term remedies.

The government previously has toyed with the idea of closing many of the mines, but until other sources of employment are found, particularly in the heavily populated and most politically active Donetsk region - where coal ruled the economy for most of the 20th century - no one is eager for widespread shutdowns.

But now the government may have no choice but to take action. In the last few years the situation has become particularly critical with miners' deaths becoming an almost routine occurrence. For the first two months of 2000 the Ministry of Coal had already reported 40 deaths. In 1999 a total of 297 people died in the mines of Ukraine; 360 deaths were reported in 1998.

There has been an international outpouring of sympathy for the families of the latest victims. While the presidents of Estonia and Poland sent condolences, the Chinese Embassy in Kyiv announced that the Republic of China would donate $15,000 to the families of the deceased miners.

In Ukraine, the government said that each of the families would be allocated an amount of money equal to five annual salaries, and each child would be given one annual salary.

Lawmakers in the Verkhovna Rada agreed to give up a day's pay, while the Social Democratic Party (United) announced that it had donated 5,000 hrv per family.

Meanwhile, the Jewish community of Kyiv gathered 80,000 hrv for the families through the Great Synagogue of Kyiv and the Jewish Community Center, which will be delivered to the victims' families by Chief Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman.

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