Four air rescue crews from Nitra, Banska Bystrica, Trencin and Zilina were dispatched to the site of a gas explosion, which occurred at a coalmine in Novaky on Wednesday evening. The gas ignition incident injured a total of nine people, four of whom were injured seriously. All the miners who were injured during the incident managed to get out of the mine, walking two kilometres from the ignition site on foot. Two of the injured miners were Poles, while one was a Ukrainian national. Their respective families have been notified about the events in the meantime. Bratislava University Hospital head Alexander Mayer reported that two of the four miners in a critical condition suffered mainly burns to the face, neck and upper limbs.
The incident will be investigated by both a mining committee and the regional prosecutor's office, interim Prime Minister Eduard Heger stated after arriving at the scene in the evening of the same day. Trencin region police have stated on Facebook that the matter will be treated as a crime of general endangerment.
Meanwhile, the Economy Ministry has reported that there was no significant damage to the mine in the incident. A team of inspectors led by Banska Bystrica District Mining Authority on Thursday morning descended into the coal mine in Novaky to investigate the gas ignition incident.
According to Stanislav Paulik, director of the Main Mine Rescue Station, the mine equipment as well as the section itself is not damaged. If the commission concludes that the site can be put into operation, it will be manned by a permanent technical supervisor and there will be increased supervision. "At the moment it is methane-free, it is clean. It looks like there was a sudden displacement of methane. But what caused it, we can't say. The workplace was trouble-free, we were there on Wednesday morning," the station director explained, adding that the measuring instruments were functional and it was a one-off event. According to Paulik, the incident occurred at the first horizon, about 200 metres below the surface.
Source: TASR
