MOSCOW. Jan 25 (Interfax-AVN) - Some 1,300 people died and over 11,500 were injured in emergency situations in Russia last year, a spokesman for the Emergencies Ministry told Interfax- Military News Agency on Friday.
As many as 901 emergencies and disasters of local, territorial and federal scales were registered in the country in 2001, the spokesman said. The number of man-made emergencies grew up in comparison with 2000; they killed over 1,100 people.
The number of air crashes increased. Sixteen crashes were registered in 2000, while in 2001, the figure grew to 36 and the number of victims to 361. The most serious crashes took place near the city of Irkutsk and in the Krasnodar territory where two TU-154M Careless passenger planes claimed the lives of 145 and 78 people respectively. Experts say that equipment failure and mistakes of flight control services are the main reasons for last year's crashes.
Nineteen emergencies and crashes took place on the railway and 23 on water. The most serious of 40 oil spills occurred at mains in the Agygeyan, Bashkirian, Udmurtian and Khanty-Mansi autonomous republics, Ivanovo, Rostov, Volgograd, Samara, Vologda and Chelyabinsk regions. The main reason for those emergencies is worn-out tubes.
According to the spokesman, 14 large-scale terrorist acts were carried out in the North Caucasus region, claiming the lives of 47 people.