Authorities Release Causes of Fatal Alrosa Flood

RAPAPORT… A commission analyzing causes of a fatal flood at Alrosa’s Mir mine has identified 16 company officials whose errors led to the accident.




Management of the Russian miner is now required to determine
in what way each of the people was personally responsible for the August flood, which killed eight workers, Alrosa said last week.



Both technical and organizational factors, as well as
changes in the underground water situation, caused the flood, according to the
commission, which Russia’s Federal Environmental, Industrial and Nuclear
Supervision Service set up following the incident. The
authority also specified measures to reduce the possibility of a similar
accident happening again.



In its conclusions, the commission listed several technical
causes of the flood, including failings related to Alrosa’s “dry conservation”
project in the early 2000s. The company also did not reliably assess changes
related to underground water at the open-pit mine, the investigators found.



The conditions that resulted in the accident took several
years to develop, rather than emerging abruptly, Alrosa noted.



“Alrosa experts observed no signs of an emergency,” the
rough producer said. “The monitoring system did not predict the emergency
either.”




Alrosa has paused operations at the Mir mine, and estimated the damage at $170.5 million (RUB 10.22 billion).