ANOTHER IN A LONG STRING OF INSTITUTIONAL fire disasters took place yesterday in Russia.
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Itar-Tass photo
A nursing home near Tula, just south of Moscow, suffered a fire Sunday afternoon that raced through the two-story brick building that was the residence of about 280 aged patients.
The Associated Press reports:
Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Viktor Beltsov said that fire inspectors had asked courts to order the home closed because of fire safety violations, including the lack of an alarm system.
More than 250 people escaped the two-story building or were evacuated, but emergency workers picking through the wreckage after the fire was extinguished found bodies overnight and into the morning, Beltsov said.
He said it appeared personnel at the home were to blame for the high death toll. Firefighters were only alerted of the blaze half an hour after it broke out, and employees “did not organize the effective evacuation” of residents, he said, citing preliminary information.
Twice in the past year following inspections, fire authorities appealed to courts to order the facility shut because of “glaring violations” of fire safety rules, Beltsov said. He said the building had no fire alarm and no system that would automatically alert the fire department of a blaze.
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AFP image
Following the long-standing practice of Russian information censorship, the police have already declared that the cause was an electrical short-circuit, even though nobody has begun an investigation into the building yet.
It is still not clear as to how long the staff waited before calling the fire department. The fire began during the noon lunch hour, but as you can see by the picture at the top of the page, after nightfall there is still a minimal suppression activity, if any.
Also, to lose so many victims during a mid-day event indicates a lack of evacuation preparedness.
Russia Today has an English-speaking VIDEO.
(be patient….it has Russian-quality downstreaming)
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BBC graphic
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