Miners of the Kuzbass iron ore mine "Sheregeshskaya" were evacuated due to smoke underground, the administration of the Tashtagol district of the Kemerovo region reported. According to the administration's press service, there was no open fire. None of the miners were injured, the message says.
“The fire occurred in a change house located underground,” said one of the mine workers. According to him, the fire was immediately extinguished.
As a result of the smoke, about 180 miners were raised to the surface. Specialists are currently investigating the cause of the incident.
"The horizon will be ventilated, and the mine will resume work," the press service of the Tashtagol region administration said.
In November last year, EVRAZ launched a digitalization project at the Sheregeshskaya mine. As part of the project, a high-speed data transmission network based on fiber-optic communication lines and a wireless LTE network were deployed in the underground mine.
The Sheregeshskaya mine is part of the EVRAZ ZSMK mining segment. Iron ore is mined underground. Sheregeshskaya produces up to 4.8 million tons of crude ore per year. This is the first mine in Kuzbass, where high-performance self-propelled equipment was used.
According to EVRAZ, today 95% of mining operations at the mine are carried out using modern tunneling machines, surface drilling machines, bolting machines, charging and auxiliary machines. The use of modern digital solutions in the future will allow the enterprise to increase the volume of crude ore production by 200 thousand tons per year.
