{"id":1804,"date":"2013-10-09T12:39:46","date_gmt":"2013-10-09T11:39:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/up\/wordpress\/2013\/10\/09\/panic-as-russia-mistakenly-reports-55-deaths-from-toxic-gas\/"},"modified":"2022-10-29T17:15:40","modified_gmt":"2022-10-29T16:15:40","slug":"panic-as-russia-mistakenly-reports-55-deaths-from-toxic-gas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/panic-as-russia-mistakenly-reports-55-deaths-from-toxic-gas\/","title":{"rendered":"Panic as Russia mistakenly reports 55 deaths from ‘toxic gas’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Russians in Siberia were thrown into momentary panic on Friday when the emergencies ministry mistakenly issued a press release reporting 55 people had died from inhaling toxic chlorine gas. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emergency services on Friday were holding scheduled drills across the vast country involving various disaster scenarios such as deadly explosions and fires.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scenario concocted by officials for Tyumen — an industrial region of 3.6 million people about 1,700 kilometres (1,000 miles) east of Moscow — involved a toxic emission of chlorine gas at a waterworks.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

But things went horribly 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.”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The press release added that a toxic chlorine cloud was rapidly spreading across the region’s capital, also called Tyumen, and its northeastern areas.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The news was instantly picked up by Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency and radio stations such as nationally-syndicated Moscow Echo.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It took about five minutes for officials to realise their mistake and issue a corrected version of the statement explaining that this was all just a training exercise and no one was really hurt.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It was a poorly worded statement,” an official with the Tyumen emergencies service told AFP by telephone.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We are looking into it — we have been getting a lot of calls about it.”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The federal emergencies ministry even issued a statement in block capitals, stating: “THIS IS ALL PART OF AN EXERCISE!!!”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the false information spread like wildfire across Russian social networks. Komsomolskaya Pravda popular daily wrote that its Tyumen office was inundated with calls.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“At about noon, our office was flooded with calls from panicked citizens who believed that something terrible had really happened in Tyumen.”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Various hashtags involving Tyumen and emergencies ministry also skyrocketed into the most popular on Twitter social network in Russia.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“After such ‘training exercises’ involving a ‘scenario’ with 55 bodies, you really could end up with 55 deaths — from heart attacks,” Russia’s popular opposition leader Alexei Navalny tweeted.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n


<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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