Cosmodrome roof collapses, leaving eight workers trapped

ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- The roof of a 260-foot-tall hangar at the Baikonur cosmodrome, Russia's main rocket launching site, collapsed Sunday, trapping eight workers in the debris, officials said.

An eight-man construction crew was on the roof of the cosmodrome's main hangar when it caved in, said Kairzhan Turezhanov, a spokesman for the Kazakh Emergency Situations Committee. Russia rents the facility from Kazakhstan for its space program.

It was unlikely any of the workers could have survived the fall, Sergei Gorbunov, a spokesman for the Russian space agency, told RTR state television.

Russia would not allow Kazakh rescuers to approach the building, which was still unsteady, Turezhanov said.

The hangar, which served as a storage facility for the remnants of a scrapped shuttle program, was cordoned off because of fears that the walls could collapse.

There was no information about the condition of the eight workers, Turezhanov said.

A special Russian rescue team left Moscow for Baikonur, some 1,300 miles southeast of Moscow, at 7:40 p.m., said Marina Rykhlina, a spokeswoman for the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry.

The plane was to arrive three hours later, or 13 hours after the accident took place.

RTR broadcast still photos of the hangar that showed the roof and upper wall of the concrete structure crumpled in two places.

Baikonur is Russia's main commercial rocket launching site.

The hangar that collapsed was built in the late 1960s for the Soviet moon program and was then used for construction of the Buran space shuttle. It had not been used since the Buran program was abandoned in 1993 after making one successful unmanned flight in 1988. A Buran ship was in the hangar at the time of the accident, RTR said.