15 PEOPLE ARE CONFIRMED DEAD AFTER THE EXPLOSION IN MIDZHUR FACTORY

“The hope of finding survivors after the yesterday’s explosion in “Midzhur” factory near the village of Gorni Lom has ended. Obviously, the 13 men and 2 women who were on shift at the time of the blast have died”, the Director of the National Fire Safety and Protection of Population Service, chief commissioner Nikolai Nikolov told journalists on 2nd of October. “Their families have been informed”, he said and added: “We will not give up and the rescue efforts and monitoring of the region will go on.”

The Prosecutor’s Office has seized materials  that may be relevant to the incident and has ordered actions. Joint teams of the Investigation Service, Ministry of Interior (MoI), the army and other agencies will carry out investigative activities in order to find out why this explosion happened and to prevent such incidents from happening in the future, said commissioner Nikolov. He noted that the explosion was extremely powerful, destroyed two buildings and part of the workshop and left two craters in their place. Neighboring buildings also have been significantly damaged and fragments and debris, weighing 150-200 kg each, were flying hundreds of metres away. The blast was caused by a highly explosive substance, Nikolov said. The people managing the production and utilization were very well prepared professionals, he explained and said the cause of the explosion was probably a human error.

The explosion occurred at 16:58 on Wednesday, 1st of October and the signal for it was submitted at 17:07.