The roof of a 260ft tall hangar at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan collapsed today, trapping eight workers under the debris, officials said. An eight-man construction brigade was on the roof of a hangar at the cosmodrome - which Russia uses as its main launch site - when it caved in, said Kairzhan Turezhanov, a spokesman for the Kazakh Emergency Situations Committee. 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 programme, was cordoned off because of fears that the walls could collapse, and there was no information about the condition of the eight workers, he said. Sergei Gorbunov, a spokesman for the Russian space agency, said it was unlikely that any of them had survived the fall. ’’I’m afraid not. Eighty meters is 80 meters,’’ he told Russia’s RTR state television.

The roof of a 260ft tall hangar at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan collapsed today, trapping eight workers under the debris, officials said.

A special Russian rescue brigade left Moscow for Baikonur, some 1,300 miles southeast of the Russian capital, said Marina Rykhlina, a spokeswoman for the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry. The plane was due to arrive three hours later, or 13 hours after the accident occurred. RTR broadcast still photos of the hangar after the accident that showed the roof and upper wall of the concrete structure crumpled in two places. Baikonur is Russia’s main commercial rocket launching site and is rented from Kazakhstan by Russia for its space program.

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. Lightning returns final fantasy xiii strategy guide pdf download.