According to the most recent news on the subject, released Monday, Russian giant mining Alrosa continues to search for eight miners still trapped in the Mir diamond mine in Yakutia, Siberia. In an accident Friday, the underground pit was flooded, with 151 miners underground at the time. According to Alrosa in an update released Friday, 142 miners were extracted.
According to Gem Konnect quoting Russian officials, “the open-pit crater contained some 300,000 cubic meters of water, the equivalent of 120 Olympic-size swimming pools”.
Of the nine missing miners, a 36-year-old man, was rescued on Saturday and taken to hospital. According to the same report, he is in stable condition. The search, meanwhile, continues for the remaining eight missing miners.
On January, 2017, Alrosa announced that Mir mine has achieved its full projected capacity, and is expected to produce diamonds worth $400 million annually. Mir is located in Eastern Siberia, Russia and is the second largest excavated hole in the world, surpassed only by the Bingham Copper Mine in Utah. The first diamonds from the underground mine were produced in 2009.
