As the water level rose, employees stampeded toward the main entrance. Fearing a total
collapse of the dam, many phoned relatives downstream and urged them to seek shelter in
the surrounding Sayan Mountains. Among the fleeing workers were several supervisors
in charge of safety and emergencies, which added to the confusion. On the fourth floor,
shell-shocked midlevel operators telephoned up the chain of command for a contingency
plan. No one answered.
Using his mobile phone as a flashlight, security guard Kataytsev found his way to an exit
and made for higher ground. At the crest of the dam, he and several other employees
struggled to manually close the penstock intake gates. By 9:30 am they had sealed all the
gates, and the destruction below ceased.
In the wake of the accident, rescue crews mobilized to search for survivors. RusHydro,
the partially state-owned utility company that operates Sayano-Shushenskaya, assembled
400 employees to pump out the flooded turbine hall and pick through the twisted debris.
Russian president Dmitry Medvedev dispatched Sergei Shoigu, his emergencies minister,
and Sergei Shmatko, the energy minister, to oversee rescue efforts. Environmental cleanup
crews attempted to contain the oil spill that stretched 50 miles down the Yenisei River
and killed 400 tons of fish at trout farms. Over two weeks, 2000 rescuers removed
177,000 cubic feet of debris, pumped 73 million gallons of water and pulled 14 survivors
from the wreckage. But 75 workers--those trapped in the turbine hall and in the flooded
rooms below--weren't so lucky.
For Russians, the catastrophe called to mind the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear
Power Plant in Ukraine, which was then part of the Soviet Union. Speaking on a Moscow
radio station, Shoigu called the hydro dam accident "the biggest man-made emergency