Fire safety breaches blamed for 64 deaths
As Siberian fire toll reaches 64, father reveals doomed attempt to reach his dying daughters in cinema
A litany of fire safety violations were yesterday blamed for the death toll in the blaze in the industrial Siberian city of Kemerovo reaching as high as 64. Investigators said escape exits were blocked and the fire alarm system was switched off by a security guard after the blaze broke out. Authorities launched a criminal investigation as four people were arrested. “Our children burned while we just watched,” said Olga Lillyevyali, who rushed to the shopping centre as the fire was under way, news website Meduza reported.
THE parents of three sisters have described receiving desperate phone calls from the trapped girls just minutes before they died in a locked cinema as flames engulfed a Russian shopping centre.
A litany of fire safety violations were yesterday blamed for the death toll in the fire in the industrial Siberian city of Kemerovo reaching as high as 64.
Investigators said fire exits were blocked and the fire alarm system was switched off by a security guard shortly after the blaze broke out on Sunday.
Authorities launched a criminal investigation as four people were arrested and questioned by police yesterday, including the head of the company responsible for servicing the fire alarm system and the technical director of the company that owned the retail complex. “Our children burned while we just watched,” said Olga Lillyevyali, who rushed to the shopping centre as the fire was under way, 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.
Russian media reported local people saying cinemas in the shopping centre locked their doors to stop people entering without a ticket.
“I started to crawl but I realised 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 to get out of the cinema but I couldn’t do anything – there were flames in front of me.”
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 for- mer confectionery factory in 2013.
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 yesterday: “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.”
The prosecutor general’s office yesterday ordered all shopping malls in Russia to be checked for fire safety features. It was not immediately clear how many other children had died in the blaze, with authorities saying eight of the 23 victims who have been so far identified were children, but the shopping centre was full of families enjoying the first weekend of the Easter school holidays.
Maya Yerokhina, a young girl from the central city of Kazan, believed to be among the victims, updated the status on her profile page on Vkontakte, a social networking site during the fire to read: “This is the end.”
An 11-year old boy was in intensive care yesterday after jumping from a third-floor window to evade the thick smoke during a dramatic escape caught on camera. Both his parents and a sibling were reported to have died.
One piece of footage aired by state television showed people desperately trying to escape by battering down a closed door as flames crept closer.
Eight children, mostly aged 11 and 12, from the same school in the local village of Treschevsky perished in the blaze during their end of term trip.
One of the girls from the group, Viktoriya Pochankina, aged 12, reportedly got through to her aunt from the burning cinema and asked her to tell her mother she loved her.
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.”
Local hospitals reported an influx of people wanting to donate blood for the victims.
Stories of feats of bravery also emerged yesterday. Tatyana Darsaliya, 36, a teacher, reportedly led her own daughter to safety and then returned to the burning building to try to save other children. Ms Darsaliya’s daughter, Eleonora, wrote that her mother had “died like a hero”.
Two hundred animals, including rabbits, turtles, pigs, and goats are also believed to have died in the shopping centre’s petting zoo.
‘The whole system of fire safety oversight has become a huge trough of corruption’