The restoration of the Bazhanov mine in Ukraine's Donetsk Region, which is part of the state company Makiyivvuhillia, will take sixteen months in the wake of the July 29 accident that claimed eleven lives, Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov during at a meeting he convened at the mine on Sunday.
"The plan for restoring the mine is figured for sixteen months. This mine should be making money in sixteen months," Azarov said.
The accident at the mine was unprecedented in both Ukrainian and world experience, he said, and was "not a case of elevators breaking down."
There are three operating lifts of this type at Ukrainian mines, Azarov said, and this is to be carefully inspected.
"The elevator’s carrying capacity was lower than critically possible," according to an inspection of the accident site and the latest available information, the prime minister said. "The question arises: why did the mine’s management not deal with these issues?" he said.
After the accident, 538 miners were able to reach the surface independently after the mine’s pit frame collapsed.
This was the second of two mine accidents on July 29, after a methane-air explosion at the Sukhodilska-Skhidna mine in Luhansk Region (part of the company Krasnodonvuhillia, a Metinvest group enterprise) took the lives of 26 people.
Makiyivvuhillia is among Ukraine’s ten largest coal producers, mining energy and coking coal and encompassing eleven shafts.
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