"I was working with an axe when I suddenly saw that, to the north, the sky split in two and fire appeared high over the forest,” a local miner, Semyon Semyonov, one of the few eye-witnesses of the event, recalled at the time. “At that moment I became very hot, as if my shirt was on fire. I wanted to tear off my shirt and throw it down, but then the sky closed, and a strong thump sounded. I was thrown off the porch. After that, there followed such a noise, as if rocks were falling or cannons were firing; the earth shook, and when the sky opened up, hot wind raced from the north, like from cannons, which left traces in the ground like pathways…"