At least 64 dead in Russian mall fire
Centre in Kemerovo was full of families enjoying first week of school holidays
MOSCOW — At least 64 people, many believed to be children, perished in the Siberian city of Kemerovo as an engulfing fire swept through a crowded shopping centre where fire exits had been blocked.
An entire class of schoolchildren apparently died in the fire, some having had the chance to make desperate, futile phone calls to parents or relatives before succumbing to the smoke and flames.
The parents of three sisters described receiving desperate phone calls from their trapped daughters just minutes before they died in a locked cinema.
“Our children burned while we just watched,” said Olga Lillyevyali, who rushed to the shopping centre as the fire was underway, Russian news website Meduza reported.
Her three daughters, twins aged 11 and their five-year-old sister, had been dropped off at the cinema by their father, Alexander Lillyevyali, to see children’s film Sherlock Gnomes earlier that afternoon.
When he got a phone call an hour later from one of his daughters to say she was stuck behind locked doors as the fire spread, he raced upstairs.
Cinemas in Russia often lock doors during the screening to stop people entering without a ticket.
“I started to crawl but I realized I had no strength,” Mr. Lillyevyali said.
“I had inhaled so much smoke that I was on the verge of fainting. My daughter was ringing and ringing me. I could only shout down the phone that she should try and get out of the cinema but I couldn’t do anything — there were flames in front of me.”
He also expressed anger at the emergency services for their handling of the disaster.
“They took three minutes — three (expletive) minutes! — to put on their masks,” Lillevyali said, with tears in his eyes. The firefighters initially followed him to the staircase leading to the theatre, 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 theatre 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 goddamn regulations.
A litany of fire safety violations were blamed for the death toll.
Investigators said fire exits were blocked and the fire alarm system was switched off by a security guard shortly after the fire broke out on Sunday.
Authorities launched a criminal investigation into the fire. Four people were arrested and questioned by police Monday, including the head of the company responsible for servicing the fire alarm system and the technical director of the company that owned the shopping centre.
Media reports suggested the initial blaze broke out on the fourth floor of the building, possibly at a trampolining centre, and spread rapidly, generating huge clouds of billowing black smoke. Eyewitnesses said that staff did not arrange for evacuation from the building, which was converted from a former confectionery factory in 2013.
The shopping centre was full of families enjoying the first weekend of the Easter school holidays.
The Prosecutor General’s Office ordered all shopping malls in Russia to be checked for fire safety.
As Russia tried to process what had happened, an official period of mourning was declared and locals brought flowers and candles to the blackened remains of the shopping centre. One sign left at the site read: “Forgive us, children.”
Some were quick to blame lax regulations on Russia’s fire safety inspection authorities, who have been accused of taking bribes to turn a blind eye to breaches.
Alexei Navalny, the Opposition leader and anti-corruption activist, wrote: “The whole system of fire safety oversight has become a huge trough of corruption. It hasn’t had any other goals for a long time.”