Felix the Cat
12-11-2006, 03:57 AM
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=db9adfe5-ad86-4036-92b0-a0524ffcc872
MOSCOW (AP) — Distraught relatives wailed or wept quietly outside a drug treatment hospital where 45 women were killed Saturday in Moscow’s deadliest fire in decades — their escape from the flames and thick, toxic smoke blocked by a locked gate and barred windows.
Officials pointed to arson as the probable cause of the pre-dawn blaze at Hospital No. 17, the latest to cause major casualties at a state-run institution in Russia, where fire-safety regulations are often ignored. Patients blamed the tight security measures for the high death toll.
There were few signs of the deadly fire on the outside of the building, located in a residential neighbourhood in southern Moscow. An official’s description of the scene, however, hinted at horrific panic as desperate patients struggled to escape.
“Judging by the placement of the bodies, they really tried to get out,” said Deputy Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Chupriyan. He said all 45 victims — reportedly 43 patients and two staffers — were dead by the time firefighters arrived.
The fire erupted in a wooden cabinet in a kitchen at one end of a second-floor corridor, officials said. The main exit was blocked by a locked gate that staff members could not open in time, and the only other way out was cut off by choking smoke, Russia’s chief fire inspector Yuri Nenashev said
Maj.-Gen. Viktor Klimkin, Moscow’s top fire safety oversight official, said the barred windows were shut with locks that hospital personnel, who had the keys, did not manage to open.
Televised footage showed ravaged, peeling corridor walls, and black ash covering beds and belongings — a teacup, some snack buns — in a room that appeared otherwise undamaged. NTV showed a soot-covered survivor sitting outside the building next to the sprawled figures of two women who appeared dead or unconscious.
The prosecutor’s office said the fire was small, covering 25 square metres and Moscow fire department spokesman Yevgeny Bobylyov said most victims had died of asphyxiation. Some died of burns, Moscow city prosecutor Yuri Syomin said.
Nenashev said he was “90 per cent certain” arson was the cause, and Mayor Yuri Luzhkov said it appeared to be arson or extremely careless handling of flammable materials. Syomin said investigators were also looking into other possibilities, and that the fire might have started in a pile of discarded materials.
The Russian Prosecutor General’s office said repair or refurbishing had been done in the kitchen the day before the fire, and Russian media suggested the blaze could have been caused by flammable substances used for the work.
State-run Channel One television, without citing sources, said there was information the fire could have been set by a patient who was denied drugs while in withdrawal — a scenario that would draw blame away from hospital staff or administrators.
Bobylyov said that “hospital personnel worked very badly, they did not take steps to evacuate people in the early stages of the fire.” He said firefighters put out the fire within an hour of the first call for help, but that the call — around 1:30 a.m. local time — had come very late.
Bobylyov said 160 people were evacuated from the five-storey building, and the prosecutor’s office said 12 people were hospitalized. A doctor at Moscow’s main burn centre said doctors were fighting to save the life of a woman with burns on 95 per cent of her body.
A psychologist at the drug treatment hospital, Olga Rudakova, told NTV television many of the women there were HIV-infected drug addicts, and NTV reported that most of the victims were under 35 — some committed by relatives.
A van from the city’s psychological health service arrived at the hospital a few hours after the blaze broke out, and a few people went inside, presumably to provide counselling for relatives of victims. Relatives were brought into the staff entrance to the hospital, well away from reporters.
One woman cried out in anguish. A man sobbed softly and wiped tears from his eyes, his head bowed close to the building’s brick wall.
The RIA-Novosti news agency cited two patients as saying that security measures — meant to keep patients in — had contributed to the death toll, and noting that all wards at the hospital were locked at night. Those two patients left the hospital after the fire, vowing not to return.
The fire was the deadliest in Moscow since a 1977 blaze at the massive Rossiya Hotel near the Kremlin — torn down this year — in which the official death toll of 42 has been questioned.
In November 2003, a pre-dawn fire swept though a dormitory for foreign students who had been quarantined for medical checks, killing 43. Many were trapped behind permanently locked exits, causing some to leap from the five-storey building.
MOSCOW (AP) — Distraught relatives wailed or wept quietly outside a drug treatment hospital where 45 women were killed Saturday in Moscow’s deadliest fire in decades — their escape from the flames and thick, toxic smoke blocked by a locked gate and barred windows.
Officials pointed to arson as the probable cause of the pre-dawn blaze at Hospital No. 17, the latest to cause major casualties at a state-run institution in Russia, where fire-safety regulations are often ignored. Patients blamed the tight security measures for the high death toll.
There were few signs of the deadly fire on the outside of the building, located in a residential neighbourhood in southern Moscow. An official’s description of the scene, however, hinted at horrific panic as desperate patients struggled to escape.
“Judging by the placement of the bodies, they really tried to get out,” said Deputy Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Chupriyan. He said all 45 victims — reportedly 43 patients and two staffers — were dead by the time firefighters arrived.
The fire erupted in a wooden cabinet in a kitchen at one end of a second-floor corridor, officials said. The main exit was blocked by a locked gate that staff members could not open in time, and the only other way out was cut off by choking smoke, Russia’s chief fire inspector Yuri Nenashev said
Maj.-Gen. Viktor Klimkin, Moscow’s top fire safety oversight official, said the barred windows were shut with locks that hospital personnel, who had the keys, did not manage to open.
Televised footage showed ravaged, peeling corridor walls, and black ash covering beds and belongings — a teacup, some snack buns — in a room that appeared otherwise undamaged. NTV showed a soot-covered survivor sitting outside the building next to the sprawled figures of two women who appeared dead or unconscious.
The prosecutor’s office said the fire was small, covering 25 square metres and Moscow fire department spokesman Yevgeny Bobylyov said most victims had died of asphyxiation. Some died of burns, Moscow city prosecutor Yuri Syomin said.
Nenashev said he was “90 per cent certain” arson was the cause, and Mayor Yuri Luzhkov said it appeared to be arson or extremely careless handling of flammable materials. Syomin said investigators were also looking into other possibilities, and that the fire might have started in a pile of discarded materials.
The Russian Prosecutor General’s office said repair or refurbishing had been done in the kitchen the day before the fire, and Russian media suggested the blaze could have been caused by flammable substances used for the work.
State-run Channel One television, without citing sources, said there was information the fire could have been set by a patient who was denied drugs while in withdrawal — a scenario that would draw blame away from hospital staff or administrators.
Bobylyov said that “hospital personnel worked very badly, they did not take steps to evacuate people in the early stages of the fire.” He said firefighters put out the fire within an hour of the first call for help, but that the call — around 1:30 a.m. local time — had come very late.
Bobylyov said 160 people were evacuated from the five-storey building, and the prosecutor’s office said 12 people were hospitalized. A doctor at Moscow’s main burn centre said doctors were fighting to save the life of a woman with burns on 95 per cent of her body.
A psychologist at the drug treatment hospital, Olga Rudakova, told NTV television many of the women there were HIV-infected drug addicts, and NTV reported that most of the victims were under 35 — some committed by relatives.
A van from the city’s psychological health service arrived at the hospital a few hours after the blaze broke out, and a few people went inside, presumably to provide counselling for relatives of victims. Relatives were brought into the staff entrance to the hospital, well away from reporters.
One woman cried out in anguish. A man sobbed softly and wiped tears from his eyes, his head bowed close to the building’s brick wall.
The RIA-Novosti news agency cited two patients as saying that security measures — meant to keep patients in — had contributed to the death toll, and noting that all wards at the hospital were locked at night. Those two patients left the hospital after the fire, vowing not to return.
The fire was the deadliest in Moscow since a 1977 blaze at the massive Rossiya Hotel near the Kremlin — torn down this year — in which the official death toll of 42 has been questioned.
In November 2003, a pre-dawn fire swept though a dormitory for foreign students who had been quarantined for medical checks, killing 43. Many were trapped behind permanently locked exits, causing some to leap from the five-storey building.