SAMARA, June 21 (RIA Novosti) – A guard at a central Russian military facility where a large fire erupted amid accidental munitions explosions managed to survive by hiding in a big, antique cannon, a rescue service official said Friday.
“The man hid in an antique cannon with armor plating. He was able to call from there and explain where he was hiding,” said the official, Oleg Motsar.
The guard had sat there for several hours, hearing shrapnel pound against the outside, before he was freed by a team of rescuers in a Tigr heavily clad multi-terrain assault vehicle, the official said, adding the truck had some trouble getting to the site through a massive barbed wire fence.
Ammunition blasts have continued as massive amounts of water dumped from the air onto the blaze caused unexploded shells to detonate, the Interior Ministry said Thursday in a statement. The fire began Tuesday evening.
Some 6,500 residents, including 800 children, have been evacuated from the surrounding community, near the city of Chapayevsk in Russia’s Samara region. Thirty-four people have been injured, with at least one person reported dead.
A regional official told RIA Novosti on Wednesday that there were more than 3,000 unexploded shells at the facility, and the blaze could endure another several days.
