VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (AFP) — Survivors recalled the terrifying seconds after toxic gas was pumped into their nuclear submarine in an accident on Saturday in which 20 people were killed, Russian newspapers reported.
The submarine was overcrowded, cabin doors were locked and some of the crew were too dazed to put on their gas masks, they said, after the biggest naval disaster since the Kursk submarine sank in 2000, killing 118 sailors.
"I was lying down resting after being on watch. Suddenly the freon gas started coming down right above me. It was like a drug. I lost consciousness," Viktor Rifk, an engineer on board, told the popular Komsomolskaya Pravda daily.
Rifk and other survivors are at a military hospital near Vladivostok, Russia's main Pacific naval base. The area is off-limits to the media and the Komsomolskaya Pravda journalist was forced to sneak in through a fence.
Twenty-one people were also injured by the poisoning, which happened while the new submarine was being tested out in the Sea of Japan and was apparently caused by an accidental functioning of the fire extinguishing system.
"After the liquefied gas literally fell down on us, I heard an alarm and then a cry from the executive officer: 'Switch on your breathing apparatus!'" said Sergei Anshakov, another engineer on the submarine.
"Some people got the freon point-blank and they were immediately gone. Some people got confused and didn't manage to put on their gas masks. Others had put it to one side so that it wouldn't get in the way," Anshakov said.
Speaking to the Izvestia daily, Denis Koshevarov, a warrant officer, said the toll could have been much higher if the fire alarm system had sprayed gas throughout the submarine and the accident had happened at night.
"We were lucky. We were very lucky. First of all, it happened in the evening and not at night. There would have been more dead at night," Koshevarov said.
"The other thing is that the freon came down only in two sections, not in all six. It's frightening to think what might have happened," he added.
"Why so many dead? Some people were sleeping and didn't manage to wake up in time... We haven't seen this kind of thing in the navy for a long time."
Alexei Shanin, another officer on board the submarine, recalled the frantic collective effort by the crew to rescue sleeping men poisoned by the freon gas spraying out of the fire extinguishing system and stuck in locked cabins.
"Everything happened at 18.05. The fire extinguishing system suddenly came on. It was like a tap on a water pipe: one moment it's shut and the next it's bursting out with water," Shanin told the Tvoi Den newspaper.
"We had to smash down the doors of the cabins that had been locked. We took the lads out. Two breaths of freon and that's it. Some of them died on our way into the port. Everyone who felt okay helped out," he added.
Shanin said there had already been problems with the submarine during two previous trials and that the number of people on board was far greater than allowed.
"There were 224 people on board. And the usual size of the crew is 80, 90 people. We even had to take turns sleeping," he said.
"We went out three times on that sub. There were some problems before but we found them, then returned to the port and sorted them out. The accident happened on our third trip."
The Kommersant daily earlier reported the submarine was due to be leased to India.
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