At least 22 people died overnight from Friday to Saturday in a fire at a private retirement home in Kemerovo, Siberia, in east-central Russia, investigators announced.
“Selon les des nières données, lors de l’inspección du site, les corps de deux autres personnes ont été retrouvés. The name of morts est ainsi passedé à 22”, deploré le Comité d’enquête russe, en charge des principales investigations dans the country.
According to investigators, “six other people were injured, two of whom were hospitalized in serious condition with burns.”
An earlier Russian rescue report posted on Telegram reported 20 dead. “At 05:25,” the rescue operations “were over,” they said on Telegram.
The interior of the building went up in smoke.
In a video released by the emergency services, we could see charred tarpaulins and several fire trucks positioned near the small dilapidated establishment. The interior of the building had completely gone up in smoke.
According to the Tass news agency, the fire spread overnight over 180 m2 in a two-story wooden building.
This private retirement home was “illegal”, according to a police source, quoted by Tass. Russia’s Investigative Committee had announced on Saturday the opening of a particular investigation for “negligence that led to the death of two or more people.”
“A 31-year-old man” is accused by investigators of “having rented a private house as a temporary residence for” elderly people, the Investigative Committee said in a separate statement.
The presumed origin of the fire would be “a defective stove,” investigators said.
“The day before the incident, the tenants informed (the owner) that the boiler was defective, but he did not take any action to repair the equipment,” they denounced.
Supervision of private nursing homes.
“The inspection of the premises continues, the objects necessary for the continuation of the investigation are seized. Witnesses are questioned”, can also be read in his press release.
According to the emergency services, the establishment had been “identified at the end of 2021” by the authorities and would be subject to an unannounced control in 2023.
The regional governor, Sergei Tsivilev, ordered, for his part, the “immediate” holding of meetings between the different mayors of the Kemerovo region and “their committees in charge of emergency situations.”
He also asked, according to the Tass news agency, that “all nursing homes, mainly private ones, be reviewed.”
The city of Kemerovo had already been devastated in March 2018 by a fire in a shopping center that killed 60 people, including some 40 children and adolescents, a tragedy that shocked Russia.
In early November, a fire in a bar in Kostroma, 300 kilometers northeast of Moscow, killed 13 people. In 2009, 156 people died in a huge fire at a nightclub in Perm, a city in the Urals in eastern Russia.
Source: BFM TV
