HEARTS ACHE, ANGER SURGES AFTER SIBERIAN MALL FIRE KILLS 64
Hearts ache, anger surges after Siberian mall fire kills 64
Trapped inside a movie theatre at a burning shopping centre, 11-year-old Vika Pochankina made a panicked phone call to her aunt and delivered her last words: “I’m suffocating. Tell Mama that I loved her.”
Yevgenia Pochankina told her niece to cover her nose with her clothes to fend off the smoke.
“After a moment, she disconnected,” the aunt told The Associated Press.
The deaths of 64 people — including 41 children — in a Siberian shopping centre fire on March 25 have tormented their loved ones not only with the memories of those they have lost but with deep dismay about the state of life in Russia.
The relatives — and many others in Russia — ask why the shopping centre’s emergency exits were locked, why the mall’s fire alarms didn’t sound, whether the centre ever met building standards or if inspectors were bribed to turn a blind eye to deficiencies.
Living in Kemerovo, a Siberian city 3,000 kilometres east of Moscow, they are hurt and angry over what they see as official callousness after the fire. The regional governor didn’t visit the scene, President Vladimir Putin didn’t declare a national day of mourning until two days after the fire and officials have dismissed their protests over the blaze as political opportunism.
“This tragedy reflects all of Russia’s problems — the corruption of officials who closed their eyes to problems with fire safety, unco-ordinated work of the special services, the imperviousness of authorities,” said Rasim Yaraliyev, head of a citizen’s group pressing for answers about the fire.
Vika was one of six schoolchildren from the village of Treshchevsky who had travelled 45 kilometres that day to Kemerovo, a trip rewarding them for being good students. As they sat in the theatre watching an animated film, a fire broke out in the four-storey Winter Cherry mall.
Vika and her classmates were among the dead. Teacher Oksana Yevseyeva, the trip’s chaperone, had left the children to watch the movie themselves in the theatre while she did some shopping. She was on the first floor when the fire broke out above.
“I begged the guards to give me a mask and let me in to the children when the fire started, but they said there is smoke everywhere, you will just die,” she said.
Igor Vostrikov, whose wife, three daughters and a sister died in the fire, told the AP that investigators had let him see him CCTV footage from outside the movie theatre, showing that the entrance doors to the room where they died were locked by a man who possibly was trying to keep the smoke out until a rescue team arrived.
On Saturday, he posted a video apparently showing a woman opening the door to that room as smoke began filling the multiplex’s hallway but she apparently says nothing. The video showed people fleeing other rooms.
Six people have been arrested in the case, including the head of the regional construction inspection agency when the shopping centre was developed in a former candy factory, and the general director of the company that owns the mall.
But distrust in Russian officials’ promises of a thorough investigation is strong.
“They’re not telling us the truth. Judging by everything, nobody saved the children, they closed them off and abandoned them,” said Olga Begeza, whose daughter Diana wanted to go on the trip but couldn’t because her mother didn’t have the 400 rubles to pay for it.
“It seems that our lives don’t count for anything. That’s the only thing my family has understood,” she said.
Complaints about official corruption and incompetence are widespread in Russia, and in Kemerovo they are aggravated by what’s seen as an insensitive response from officials.
Although Putin visited Kemerovo on Tuesday, he did not speak to a large gathering of demonstrators demanding answers, protesting corruption and calling for regional officials’ ouster.
Deputy regional governor Sergei Tsivilyov did show up but incurred the crowd’s anger when he dismissed as “a PR stunt” concerns that the death toll was far higher than officially reported.
In a meeting with Putin, regional governor Aman Tuleyev added to the anger by blaming “”the opposition“and ”local busybodies“for fomenting the 10-hour protest.
Tuleyev’s resignation, after more than 20 years in the post, was announced Sunday by the Kremlin. Tsivilyov is now the acting governor.