Time of disasters

Russia has declared mourning for the victims of the tragedies in Samara, Novokuznetsk and the Krasnodar Territory

Today, Russia has declared mourning for the victims of three terrible disasters at once, one after another that occurred in recent days in different parts of the country. On March 17, a Tu-134 passenger plane crashed while landing at Samara airport . On March 19, near Novokuznetsk , in the Ulyanovskaya mine, when more than 200 miners were working there, a methane explosion occurred . And yesterday, near Yeisk (Krasnodar Territory), a fire destroyed the building of a nursing home, most of the residents of which died in the fire. In total, these tragedies claimed at least 175 human lives, and this figure was not yet final. If the sad outcome of the events in Samara and the Krasnodar Territory was already known - 6 and 63 dead, respectively, then in Novokuznetsk the rescue operation continued at full speed. Yesterday evening, rescuers had already rescued 106 dead from the explosion-damaged and half-flooded mine, but the fate of several more miners still remained unknown.

Yesterday, President Vladimir Putin began a meeting of the commission on military-technical cooperation with a discussion of these events, proposing to honor the memory of the victims with a minute of silence and instructing Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov to monitor the progress of the investigation into the causes of the tragedies. Already in the evening, after the news of the signing of a decree declaring mourning in the country, the leaders of Belarus, Ukraine, Greece, the Baltic countries and a number of other states expressed their condolences to the Russian President.

Russia has not seen such a massive loss of life since the memorable events of the late summer and early autumn of 2004, which ended with the tragedy in Beslan . However, against this background, the latest tragedies look no less sad. Then the authorities and ordinary residents were subjected to a well-planned attack by terrorists, that is, the deaths were the result of conscious and calculated actions of criminals. This time everything worked out as if “by itself” - without anyone’s deliberate outside “help”.

Of course, the fact that three disasters of this magnitude - the accident near Novokuznetsk and the fire near Yeisk became a record number of victims over the past few decades - occurred one after another is, of course, simply a coincidence. However, they are no longer perceived as something supernatural. Suffice it to remember last year - the collapse of the Baumansky market in Moscow, plane crashes in Irkutsk and near Donetsk , a fire in the capital's drug treatment hospital - the death toll in the tens and hundreds has become, no matter how blasphemous it may sound, almost commonplace.

The only thing that can explain this regularity of “unintentional” mass deaths is failures in state administrative management and regulation of specific areas in the life of the country. And there are more and more such dangerous (if not failed) areas, taking into account all the recent disasters - aviation, construction and supervision of the operation of buildings, the coal industry (the Ulyanovskaya mine, by the way, before the disaster was considered one of the most modern and advanced), fire safety.

According to the Department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations in the Krasnodar Territory, a fire on the first floor of a residential building (a two-story brick building built in the 70s) in the Priazovye home for the elderly and disabled, located in the village of Kamyshevatskaya, Yeisk district, began at approximately one in the morning. As soon as the fire began to spread throughout the building, the fire alarm went off. However, almost none of the hearing-impaired elderly people heard her. For unknown reasons, the hospital staff - three orderlies and a nurse - did not notice the alarm signals. The first to react was the watchman, who was not in the residential building. But he, according to preliminary data from the investigation, first tried to wake up the elderly (without much success), and then began calling his superiors at home. Only 12 minutes later - at 1.12 - the OGPS-38 control panel of the Yeisk district received a signal about a fire in a nursing home.

The fire station closest to the burning building is in the city of Yeysk - 54 km from the village of Kamyshevatskaya. As a result, the first fire crews (there are eight of them in the fire department) arrived at the burning building almost an hour later - at 2.05. By this time, the entire first floor of the Azov region was already engulfed in fire; the fire area was 800 square meters. meters.

“It has already been established that the fire was located on the first floor. The fire was small, but indoors it posed a great danger - the entire first floor almost immediately filled with carbon monoxide,” noted the Ministry of Emergency Situations. While the firefighters were driving, residents of neighboring houses began to run towards the burning building. According to eyewitnesses, several men, bringing ordinary wooden ladders from their yards, tried to help the old people get out of the windows. However, many of them could hardly move on a level floor and were unable to go down stairs. Local residents tried to save the old people who were on the second floor on their own. “Firefighters, using articulated lifts, removed most of those who managed to survive the fire from the second floor,” the Ministry of Emergency Situations said. Unfortunately, everyone on the first floor died almost immediately, suffocated by smoke and carbon monoxide.”

Together with fire crews from Yeisk (and according to some eyewitnesses, even earlier than these crews), firefighters from neighboring villages, which were much closer than the regional center, came to extinguish the burning nursing home. “We have fire brigades in neighboring villages. Several cars came to us, but there were only drivers, and, as it turned out, they didn’t know how to put out a fire,” said the administration of the village of Kamyshevatskaya.

The fire was completely extinguished only after a few hours. According to official data from the regional Ministry of Emergency Situations, “at 2.05 the fire was localized, and by 5.02 it was completely extinguished.”

After examining the fire site, 63 bodies were found - 62 old people and one nurse died. According to witnesses of the fire, nurse Lidiya Pechentseva tried to help the elderly get out until the last moment, but she died. As it turned out, of the 62 old people who died, 28 were non-ambulatory, unable to move without assistance. In total, according to preliminary data, there were 97 people in the burned building at the time of the fire. Everyone who was able to survive the fire was sent to local hospitals with various injuries and burns. All the elderly people had minor injuries except a 69-year-old man who is in a coma after jumping from the second floor of a burning building, doctors said.

According to preliminary estimates by rescuers, the fire could have been caused by recently completed renovations. As the village administration told Vremya Novostey, renovations in the Azov region building were completed in the summer. All corridors were lined with plastic panels. “Toxic smoke poured out from the burning panels, which could have poisoned the elderly,” the regional department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations told Vremya Novostei.

Firefighters have long had questions for the hospital management. As the regional department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations said, in January last year, inspectors from the State Fire Supervision Service carried out a routine inspection at the nursing home. The management of the institution was issued 36 orders to eliminate violations. Inspectors came back with a second inspection in December last year and found out that six of their instructions were never taken into account by the hospital management. In particular, the installation of the lighting system of the newly renovated building had not been completed, there were insufficient fire extinguishers, and the staff did not have personal respiratory protection equipment. After this, the firefighters went to court.

However, the main reason for such a massive loss of life, as rescuers admit, was the too late arrival of firefighters. But it is still unclear who exactly is to blame for this. “According to our regulations, there must be a fire department in any locality. But in Kamyshevatskaya it was closed,” said the regional department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. The village administration reported that all that was left from the fire department now was an old fire truck. “We had our own fire department. It belonged to the collective farm, but it went bankrupt. Part became the property of the cooperative, which opened on the site of the collective farm. But its owners already said then that they would only extinguish their own property. And then the cooperative went completely bankrupt, the firefighters were dismissed, the equipment was sold, and the car was boarded up. We wrote letters to the district administration, but they only promised us,” said an employee of the village administration, who wished to remain anonymous.

As soon as the scale of the tragedy became known, high-ranking officials began to arrive in Kamyshevatskaya yesterday, one after another. The Governor of the Krasnodar Territory, Alexander Tkachev, interrupted his business trip to the United States and arrived at the scene of the fire yesterday. Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy to the Southern Federal District Dmitry Kozak arrived in Yeisk for a special meeting. In addition, the site of the tragedy was visited by the Chief State Inspector of the Russian Federation for fire supervision, Gennady Kirillov, and the Deputy Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation in the Southern District, Ivan Sydoruk.

Following a fire in a nursing home, the prosecutor's office of the Krasnodar region opened a criminal case under Art. 109 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (causing death by negligence to two or more persons). Prosecutor of the Krasnodar Territory Leonid Korzhenek promised that all versions of the causes of the tragedy would be worked out.

What caused the fire is still unclear. According to the head of the Southern Regional Center of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation, Sergei Kudinov, “now there are three versions of the causes of the fire - deliberate arson, careless handling of fire and short circuit of the electrical wiring.”

Plenipotentiary Representative Dmitry Kozak demanded to understand “how all authorities acted - not only local, but also regional, district, what was done to save people and put out the fire. These are key questions.”

Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed condolences to the families and friends of the victims. “It was with deep regret that I learned about the tragedy that occurred near Yeisk, in the village of Kamyshevatskaya. It hurts that elderly, defenseless people died in the fire. It is necessary to conduct an investigation into the circumstances of the incident and a detailed check of the state of the fire safety systems of social institutions. I ask you to convey words of sympathy to the victims and provide them with support,” the president’s telegram says.

Kirill MELNIKOV, Alexey GRISHIN