An accident recently occurred at a Russian Army ammunition depot. The accident soon turned into a catastrophe as a number of explosions ended up killing one soldier while sending out shrapnel for more than nine miles. A minimum of eight injured persons have been reported so far, and the windows of a closely located town were blown out because of the shockwave. The incident, still ongoing, took place outside the Siberian city of Achinsk.
The explosion formed a mushroom cloud over the blast site and had shrapnel flying to a distance of 9.3 miles. Government officials have already given orders for the evacuation of 11,000 civilians that are living nearby while closing the airspace near the accident site to air traffic. TASS – a Russian government-owned media outlet – has reported that the explosion took place at the Logistics Support Center of the Central Military District.
According to reports, Russian reporters were carrying out tasks in an ammunition storage warehouse where they were handling propellant charges when something went wrong quite badly. Propellant charges, for those of you who do not know, are bags filled explosive propellant that is shoved behind the artillery shells in howitzers and other artillery equipment. The site also had 25,000 artillery shells present at the time of the incident. The Russian Army unit involved in the incident is the ‘74008 military unit’ as per reports, and the soldiers of the unit are restricted in a bomb shelter while the explosions go on.
According to TASS, two ‘disposal sites’ were still burning, suggesting that the soldiers were getting rid of the old or obsolete munitions. TASS has further reported that the warehouse where the incident took place is slated for demolition in 2022 and is one of the oldest warehouses in Russia. The Russian government has sent two firefighting trains to the explosion site to take care of the matter. Moscow is also utilizing two Uran-14 firefighting robots that are equipped with high-pressure nozzles that can spray water for a distance of up to 180 feet.
