UrBC, Magnitogorsk, January 21, 2019. Members of the rescue teams who helped find and evacuate the victims of an explosion at an apartment building on December 31, 2018 got awarded in Magnitogorsk, Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) Information & PR Department reports.

Thank-you letters from Head of Russia’s Department of Emergencies’ Chelyabinsk Region division were presented to 111 employees of MMK and MMK Group’s other member enterprises; all of them helped to deal with the emergency. These are people working at MMK Group’s member enterprises’ Drop-Hammer Department, Gas Rescue Plant, Job Safety & Industrial Safety Department, Senior Engineer’s Department, Administration Department, and the plant’s social welfare groups.

‘Thanks to you and your special-purpose vehicles, we could do everything fast. Thanks to you, people’s lives have been saved, including the young life of Vanya Fokin,’ said Deputy Head of Russia’s Department of Emergencies’ Chelyabinsk Region division Maxim Pryakhin.

‘I thank you all for responding to this catastrophe and for doing your very best to help the victims and the rescuers. This is our shared tragedy and our shared grief. Thank you all, one more time,’ said MMK’s Director-General Pavel Shilyayev.

Now according to the authorities, a gas leak devastated an apartment building in Magnitogorsk on December 31, 2018. 39 people were killed.