‘We are burning.’ 64 die in fire

An entire class of schoolchildren apparently died in Sunday’s fire in a Russian shopping mall.

MOSCOW — With anger, sadness, and confusion, Russians struggled to come to grips Monday with a shocking failure of fire safety that allowed a blaze to storm through a crowded shopping center in the Siberian city of Kemerovo, killing 64 people.

An entire class of schoolchildren apparently died in Sunday’s fire, some having had the chance to make desperate, futile phone calls to parents or relatives before succumbing to the smoke and flames.

Russian social networks were flooded with grief, and a measure of anger over the response. Officials said fire exits were blocked and an alarm had been turned off.

The disastrous blaze joins a long list of accidents, fires and sinkings in Russia marked by apparent negligence beforehand and inept or insufficient response by emergency services. Russian prosecutors can be quick to assign criminal blame in such cases, and rapidly went to work in Kemerovo, but subsequent promises to step up safety measures often prove to be halfhearted.

“We are burning, perhaps this is goodbye,” a 13-year-old named Maria posted on her social media account, according to the Rossiya-24 television channel. Hers was one of about 30 goodbyes posted by children who would not log into their accounts again.

“There are no accurate lists,” the television reporter said, “but the parents are holding on to the hope that the names of their children will be moved from the list of the dead to those missing.”

The fire broke out Sunday afternoon, the first day of a week-long school break. A class from a school in the small town of Treshchevsky had come to Kemerovo to see a movie at the Winter Cherry mall, eat ice cream and jump on a trampoline. On Monday, parents of the students visited hospitals hoping to find their children.

A woman named Yevgenia told the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda that her niece Vika called her at 4:11, right after the fire broke out, from the movie theater where so many of the children from Treshchevsky found themselves trapped.

“She told me that everything was on fire, that all the doors were blocked,” Yevgenia said, struggling to overcome her tears.

Vika told Yevgenia over the phone that she couldn’t breathe. “I told her: Vika, take off all your clothes, take them to your nose and breathe through them.”

“Please tell Mom that I loved her,” Vika replied, “please tell everyone that I loved them.”

That was the last Yevgenia heard from her niece.

In other corners of the Russian media, anger toward emergency services for their handling of the disaster found a platform.

An interview with Alexander Lillevyali published by Meduza, an independent outlet, recounted his attempts to save his daughters from the burning theater while first responders geared up and struggled to commit to a single course of action.

“They took three minutes — three f------ minutes! — to put on their masks,” Lillevyali said, with tears in his eyes.

The firefighters initially followed him to the staircase leading to the theater, he said, but they were redirected by a man who told them of another fire. He then begged them to give him a mask so he could return to the theater and save the girls himself.

“They told me: Can’t do it. Everything has to be according to regulations,” Lillevyali recalled. “My girls were left to burn because of the (expletive) regulations.”

Emergency services officials put the death toll at 64 on Monday, but local media reports suggest that many more may still be missing.

As of Monday evening, authorities said 23 of the dead had been identified. Fifty-two people required medical attention, and at least 12 of them were hospitalized.

One is an 11-year-old boy who jumped out a fourth-floor window to escape the blaze.

An offiicial said the boy was in serious condition and on a respirator, with several broken bones and emotionally traumatized.