A Week of Quarry Blasts Planned Near Vyborg

From Monday 26 October, blasting is scheduled at quarries around Kamennogorsk, in Russia’s border region with Finland. Work will continue until Friday, with residents required to stay outside a 700-metre exclusion zone.

The district administration has announced a daily operating window of 10am to 5pm, according to local news outlet 47news, which reported the warning on Sunday. Blasting is also planned for Wednesday 28 October at Erkilä quarry, nine kilometres north-east of Vyborg. Its operating window runs from 8am to 6pm. All times are local.

The notices concern an established stone industry. At Erkilä, Vyborgskoye Quarry Management extracts granite and supplies crushed stone for concrete, road foundations and other building work. The company says its products leave the quarry by lorry and rail.

Blasting begins the journey from solid rock to construction material. Once loosened, the stone is loaded onto haul trucks and taken to crushing machinery. Large pieces become smaller fragments, sorted by size for different uses. LSK, which operates several quarries around Kamennogorsk, describes this process in its own account of production.

The warnings and the companies’ descriptions point to routine quarrying. For nearby residents, the noise is a recurring feature of life in the area. According to 47news, the authorities issue advance notices because previous blasts have caused alarm.

Stone extraction here reaches back to the period when the area belonged to Finland. Kamennogorskoye Quarry Management says its operation began in 1948 on the site of a former Finnish quarry. Today, its stone goes into bridges, roads and the ballast beneath railway tracks.

During the coming week’s blasting, access to the industrial sites and the surrounding exclusion zones will remain prohibited until the work is complete.