NIZHNY NOVGOROD (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd June, 2019) Another incident took place on Saturday at the Kristall plant in the Russian city of Dzerzhinsk, with two explosions having hit the enterprise's trinitrotoluene production workshop.
The incident resulted in no deaths but caused injuries of various severity to over 80 people. The majority of them were wounded by shards of glass from windows broken in the blasts.
Following the explosions, investigators initiated criminal proceedings over violation of industrial safety standards.
It is the second time in about two months that the plant is hit with an explosion. One of the plant's facilities was completely destroyed in early April after a blast occurred at one of the plant's workshops. The explosion was followed by a fire, which was out shortly thereafter. There were no injuries or fatalities as a result of the incident.
Two explosions occurred at the plant at 11:53 a.m. Moscow time (08:53 GMT). The blasts led to a fire that spread to the territory covering 800 square meters (8,600 square feet). The blast wave smashed glass in neighboring residential buildings, with at least 85 people, including 39 plant staff, having subsequently requested medical assistance.
The fire spread beyond the plant's territory. A total of 458 people and 59 units of equipment were involved in the fire fighting, which ended by 6:00 p.m. local time.
A state of emergency was declared in Dzerzhinsk and in three neighboring settlements in light of the incident.
Dzerzhinsk Mayor Ivan Noskov said that there was no chemical threat in the city and need to evacuate its residents. He also ruled out the possibility of further explosions. Local authorities also said that the radiation background was normal, while a local office of the Russian Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing said that the concentrations of pollutants in the air were not above the norm.
�On April 4, a blast occurred at one of the plant's workshops, completely destroying a single-storey brick building belonging to the enterprise. A source in the local emergency services told Sputnik back in April that the blast might have been caused by a security breach during hazardous work.
The most recent explosions will be investigated by the personnel of the Russian Investigative Committee central office, who were sent to Dzerzhinsk at the request of the committee's chairman, Alexander Bastrykin.
�A representative of the plant told Sputnik that the enterprise's director general had been suspended from duty on the eve of Saturday's incident over repeated violations of industrial safety standards.
"After April's incident an [investigative] commission worked there, [the director general] was suspended based on [the commission's] findings," the representative said.
�Later on Saturday, local authorities are expected to hold a special meeting to take stock of the work of the emergency operations center, which was tasked with managing the incident's consequences.
It is also planned to assess the damage caused to the city and its residents at the meeting. According to the mayor of Dzerzhinsk, the Primary task will be the reconstruction of schools, where schoolchildren are set to pass state exams on June 3.
Russia's ruling United Russia party has launched collection of funds for those affected by the incident.
However, the main issue remained the actions to prevent such incidents in the future, with memories of another incident at ammunition enterprise Plant I.M. Sverdlov in Dzerzhinsk � a blast at the plant in August that claimed lives of five of its staff � still being fresh in everyone's minds.
