166 people rescued from fire in the mine – Aftonbladet

A fire broke out this morning in a mine in Garpenberg, outside Hedemora.

166 people were in the mine when the fire started.

The fire was extinguished fairly quickly and everyone was evacuated. A few hours later, production could resume.

The alarm came a few minutes before nine o’clock on Tuesday morning.

The fire must have started about 800 meters underground in a container, said Marcela Sylvander, CIO at Boliden, which owns the mine.

– It must have been the plastic material in the container, says Mats Jansson, rescue operations in Avesta.

The evacuation went fast

When the fire started, there were 166 people in the mine who went to the rescue chamber in the mine.

– It’s like rooms available at a number of locations in the mine where they can shut themselves and have fresh air for quite a few hours, says Mats Jansson.

Evacuation Work began immediately and went pretty quickly. At half past ten were all evacuated, said Daniel Lundin, fire protection engineer who was on the spot.

– The focus was primarily on the evacuation says Marcela Sylvander.

There is no information on that someone is injured.

The fire was extinguished

The rescue service from Hedemora and Avesta was on site and in addition to evacuate people worked a BA team with fighting.

– They approached the fire from below to escape the smoke, says Daniel Lundin.

In the mine, there are two fire trucks staffed by emergency services if such a disaster occurs, he says. With one of them managed to extinguish the fire.

– The fire itself was not so great, it burned in a relatively large container. But with the position that it was in a mine, and it was plastic burning fire became more difficult.

How plastic caught fire is unclear.

The work can be resumed

After the fire extinguished aired all the smoke out and then examined whether the rock above the container in some way damaged by the fire and whether there was any danger of collapse.

At lunchtime could production of the mine resume.

In the mine complex ore that contains zinc, lead, silver, copper and gold, according to Boliden. 400 people work there.