Hearts ache, anger surges after deadly mall fire

KEMEROVO, RUSSIA — 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.

On Sunday, however, the Kremlin said the governor has resigned. Aman Tuleyev had headed the Kemerovo region for more than 20 years.

“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.

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 ... but they said there is smoke everywhere, you will just die,” she said.