All that litters is, well, gold and silver?

If only!

On the eastern side of the massive country that is Russia, at an airport in Yakutsk in Siberia, a plane loaded with precious metals lost its cargo during take-off on Thursday.

According to The Guardian, the Antonov State Company plane was taking off after refuelling at the airport when its cargo door flew open and “out tumbled nearly 200 bars from the Kupol gold mine in the remote Chukotka region”:

“As it gathered height, the cargo door became damaged due to the shifting of cargo” and part of the cargo was scattered on the runway Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement on Telegram.

And the runway was literally scattered with gold and silver:

The cargo of bars of concentrated ore used to transport the precious metals weighed 9,3 tonnes, and the plane took a beating:

Thankfully no one was hurt, and the plane landed safely after the incident. Police immediately sealed off the area to prevent people from rushing to the scene:

“One hundred and seventy two bars have been found weighing around 3.4 tonnes,” the local interior ministry told TASS state news agency.

“Only part of the gold fell out – altogether there were around nine tonnes in there.”

The recovered stash:

And another look at the littered runway:

A Russian spokesman for the Canada-based mining company Kinross Gold, Stanislav Borodyuk, said that “all the cargo has been picked up”.

He further explained that the bars were Dore, a semi-pure alloy of gold and silver that is usually created at the site of a mine, and is then transported to a refinery for further purification.

Must have been a magical sight.

[source:theguardian]