Putin blames ‘criminal negligence’ for deadly fire
PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that “criminal negligence” was to blame for a mall fire that killed at least 64 people, including 41 children, after they found themselves trapped in the inferno because of locked doors.
Two days after the tragedy and after facing criticism for the delay, the Kremlin announced a nationwide day of mourning for Wednesday as questions swirled about Putin’s response to one of the deadliest fires recorded in Russia over the past century.
A criminal probe has been opened and five people have been arrested over the blaze, which raged through the busy shopping centre in the industrial city of Kemerovo in western Siberia on Sunday afternoon.
Investigators said the victims and dozens of animals were burned alive or suffocated because emergency exits were locked, notably at one of the cinema halls where children were watching cartoons. Forty-one children were among the dead, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing a source in the regional emergencies services.
Putin visited a makeshift memorial of stuffed toys, flowers and balloons near the gutted mall’s facade on Tuesday, telling officials he felt “like wailing” over the number of victims.
“What is happening here? These are not armed hostilities. This is not an unexpected release of methane in a mine. People, children came to relax,” Putin said after laying flowers at the memorial. “We are talking about demographics but are losing so many people. Because of what? Because of some criminal negligence, slovenliness.
“The first feelings when they speak about the number of victims and the number of dead children . . . one feels like wailing – not crying,” he said.
‘Tell my mum I loved her’
Russian newspapers ran heartwrenching accounts of children’s last minutes as they called their parents and relatives after being separated by the quick-spreading fire.
“Tell my mum that I loved her,” one woman quoted her niece as saying in comments in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.
Igor Vostrikov – who lost his wife, sister and three children aged 2, 5 and 7 years – said his family had perished in one of the cinemas where the doors were locked from the outside.
“No one had come to the rescue. They could have been saved,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.
Head of Russia’s Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin said ticket collectors and other staff fled the scene, leaving the moviegoers locked inside.
“Those workers who were supposed to be in charge of safety, organising evacuation, they were the first to flee,” he told Putin.
Temperatures during the blaze reached 600 degrees Celsius and some of the bodies were so burned they could not be identified, officials said.
Meeting with a group of grieving locals, Putin said some 100 investigators were working at the scene, promising they would get to the bottom of what had happened.
A young man told Putin he was outraged that the doors were locked at the mall, effectively turning the premises into “gas chambers”.
“People suffocated,” he told Putin. Many safety rules were violated, and Putin said the mall had not undergone checks for the past two years. He promised a “transparent” investigation, saying hundreds of malls across the country were in a similar condition.