Russians aching, angry after fire that killed 64
Complaints of official corruption widespread
KEMEROVO, Russia — Trapped inside a movie theater at a burning shopping center, 11-year-old Vika Pochankina made a panicked phone call to her aunt. “I’m suffocating. Tell Mama that I loved her,” the girl said.
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 center fire on March 25 have tormented their loved ones, bringing not only grief over those they lost but deep dismay about the state of life in Russia.
Relatives of the dead — and many others in Russia — ask why the shopping center’s emergency exits were locked, why the mall’s fire alarms didn’t sound, whether the center ever met building standards or if inspectors were bribed to turn a blind eye to deficiencies.
Living in Kemerovo, a Siberian city 1,900 miles 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, uncoordinated 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 traveled 30 miles that day to Kemerovo, a trip rewarding them for being good students. As they sat in the theater watching an animated film, a fire broke out in the four-story 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 theater 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 theater, 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.
Six people have been arrested in the case, including the head of the regional construction inspection agency when the shopping center 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.
Although Putin visited Kemerovo on Tuesday, he did not speak to a large gathering of demonstrators.