‘Fatal gas leak’ sends Russians into a panic
Print Edition
Russians in Siberia were thrown into momentary panic yesterday when the emergencies ministry mistakenly issued a press release reporting that 55 people died from inhaling toxic chlorine gas.
Emergency services yesterday held drills across the country involving various disaster scenarios such as deadly explosions and fires.
The scenario concocted for Tyumen — an industrial region of 3.6 million people about 1,700 kilometers east of Moscow — involved an emission of chlorine gas.
But things went wrong when the press office of Tyumen’s emergencies ministry issued a statement reporting an “accident that resulted in the death of three workers and 52 members of the public.”
It added that a toxic chlorine cloud was rapidly spreading across the region’s capital, also called Tyumen.
The news was picked up by Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency and radio stations such as Moscow Echo.
It took about five minutes for officials to realize their mistake and issue a corrected version of the statement.
“It was a poorly worded statement,” an official with the Tyumen emergencies service said. “We are looking into it — we have been getting a lot of calls about it.”
The false information spread like wildfire across Russian social networks, with hashtags involving Tyumen becoming the most popular on Twitter in Russia.
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