Accident at the Gradovskaya mine There are many Soviet films about miners, but only a few about mine rescuers. Boris Ivchenko tried to close this gap by shooting a short but memorable picture. Timekeeping did not allow to reveal all the main characters as the viewer would like, but it accommodated the main thing - the work of the squad at the scene of the accident. The undoubted advantage is the episodes of the chronicle, as well as a short story about an amazing man - Nikolai Nikolaevich Chernitsyn, a Russian mining engineer, one of the founders of the mining rescue business, who died in 33 years during rescue operations at the Gorlovsk mine No. 1. And although screenwriter Georgy Shevchenko does not draw obvious parallels between the fate of Chernitsyn and the tragedy in the family of the main character Alexander Trigorin (Les Serdyuk), these parallels are in the form of continuity of generations and dedication to their work. For a person unfamiliar with mining in the film there is not quite clear terminology. When the word "ejection in the mine" many uninitiated people think that we are talking about an explosion of methane, but this is not quite true. Sudden release (ejection of coal and gas) is a phenomenon in which there is a partial or complete destruction of the bottom, and a stream of coal suspended in the gas is formed. At the same time, the mining works are littered with a mountain mass for tens of meters and filled with gas. If this happens, the miners who survived the accident are blocked by a multimeter plug of coal or rock. Here, the count goes on for minutes - exactly as long as those trapped in a stone trap have a breathing mixture in a self-rescuer. Although the film genre is defined as a “catastrophe film,” it is not. Rather, it is a drama about one of the most dangerous professions, because the coal mines of Ukraine, Russia and China are recognized as the most dangerous in terms of sudden emissions.
"I undertake in the liquidation of an accident at mines and mines, sparing neither strength nor life to save people caught by the accident and to provide the necessary assistance" (Oath of mine rescuers)