OREANDA-NEWS. February 4, 2008. OAO Severstal announced that operations at Blast Furnace No.5 at its Cherepovets steel plant will resume as early as this weekend, following a fire yesterday which resulted in the death of a Severstal employee and injury to two others.

Severstal Cherepovets Steel Mill Director-General Anatoly Kruchinin said: "The procedures we have put in place will serve to minimise the impact of the incident on production".

The Commission set up to investigate the incident is at this stage considering two possible causes of the incident: a partial failure of refractories resulting in local overheating of the armour of the air conduit and its subsequent rupture, and the failure of a weld on the Cowper stove.

The Blast Furnace should resume operations using three Cowper stoves in a process ensuring standard productive capacity as early as Saturday, while repairs of the failed stove will be carried out at the same time.

Severstal is offering every possible assistance to the family of the dead man, 61-year old Shift Supervisor Leonid Glagolev. The company's thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends.

The injured workers were taken to hospital. One remains there, in a stable condition. The other has been discharged.