Three killed in shipyard gas leak

  • 2002-09-05
  • Sara Toth
TALLINN

Officials are investigating why three men died of methane poisoning Aug. 30 while cleaning pipes in a Tallinn shipyard.

Police and a spokesman for the Baltic Ship Repair Group have called the incident an accident but are looking into why the men were not wearing oxygen masks while in the sewage-treatment area.

Police identified the victims by their first names as Alexander, 59, Viktor, 62, and Oleg, 67, said Robert Kurvits, a spokesman for the Estonian Police Board. All three were longtime employees at the Baltic Ship Repair Group, a conglomeration of 36 companies based in Tallinn.and one man who survived, identified as Arno, 40, had gone down into the basement of a sewage treatment station on the plant's property to clean a pipe, said Priit Laos, a spokesman for the Estonian Rescue Board.

The four men were not wearing oxygen masks and they inhaled poisonous methane gas, which occurs naturally in sewage, Laos said.

When paramedics and firefighters arrived to the scene shortly after 1 p.m., two victims and one unconscious person had been brought out of the basement by co-workers wearing oxygen masks, Laos said.

Firefighters retrieved the third victim from the basement, Laos said.

Two other people have died in the last three years from methane poisoning in sewer facilities, Laos said.

"This is the first time when so many people have died together," he said.

Laos said the deaths could have been avoided if proper procedures were followed.

"Everything was wrong here," Laos said. "People working in these kinds of places should know how to behave and what protections to use. These people didn't know."

Officials from the Baltic Ship Repair Group declined to comment further about the plant's safety procedures. Police expect the investigation to take at least one week.