Death after retirement

Fire at nursing home kills ten people

Another “social” tragedy occurred on Thursday night in the Omsk region. Ten elderly people died as a result of a fire in one of the local nursing homes. Such emergencies are no longer rare. In March alone , a fire in a nursing home in the Krasnodar region killed 63 people. However, despite the smaller scale of the current tragedy, this incident once again demonstrated the sad state of affairs with regard to ensuring the safety of the most socially vulnerable people under the care of the state - lonely old people, citizens suffering from mental illness, drug addiction and alcoholism. The nursing home in the Omsk region was still considered one of the best, and - a rare case - there were almost no complaints about it in terms of fire safety. However, the human factor again turned out to be the weak link. The nurse who was on duty at the alarm panel, which worked properly, by fateful accident, was not there. The firemen received a signal late, which, according to the Emergency Situations Ministry, was fatal.

A call about a fire in a nursing home in the village of Ekaterininskoye came to the control panel of the local fire department at half past midnight. At that moment there were 317 people in the building - elderly people in care and staff. Six vehicles from the Ekaterininsky fire department and three vehicles from the regional center of Tara went to the scene. Crews from Ekaterininskaya began fighting the fire within five minutes. At this moment, several rooms and a corridor were already burning in the three-story brick building. According to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the total area of ​​the fire was more than 300 square meters. meters. Fleeing from the fire and smoke, the old people broke glass and tried to climb down the sheets. Firefighters escorted residents from the first and second floors through the doors using internal staircases; people from the third floor were taken down special ladders. Fire safety drills at the boarding home took place just recently, at the end of April, and both staff and firefighters acted in a coordinated manner. The evacuation took a matter of minutes, and it took less than three hours to completely extinguish the fire. In total, more than 300 people were rescued from the burning building unharmed. However, casualties could not be avoided. On the third floor, firefighters found ten dead. These are men aged from 60 to 80 years old who were located near the source of the fire - the hall where they usually watched TV. They were unable to get out, suffocating in the smoke. In addition, four more people were seriously injured in the fire.

The Catherine's boarding house for pensioners was considered one of the best in the region. Over the past two years, the government of the Omsk region has allocated more than 20 million rubles. for its reconstruction. In the building built in 1969, the heat, water and electricity supply systems, windows were completely replaced, and all service and residential premises were renovated. An automatic fire alarm system was also installed, costing almost 2 million rubles.

By the way, the alarm went off. However, the signal from it was sent to a remote control located in the boarding school itself, where nurses are usually on duty. But, according to the representative of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Viktor Beltsov, “at the moment it was triggered, there was no one there.”

As for the causes of the fire, a special commission of the Omsk region, the FSB Directorate, the Internal Affairs Directorate, the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the regional prosecutor's office have now taken up the investigation. Already yesterday, First Deputy Prosecutor of the Omsk Region Nikolai Savrun stated that “as a result of preliminary examinations of the fire site and examination, it was established: the source of the fire is located in a place where there were no prerequisites for the outbreak of fire, and it was brought in from the outside.” Based on the fact of the fire, the prosecutor's office of the Omsk region opened a criminal case under the article “deliberate destruction or damage to property, resulting through negligence in the death of a person or other grave consequences.” But this qualification, according to the prosecutor, is not final and can be changed if investigators establish new facts. It is possible that the wording “intentional” will be changed to “careless.”

Rescuers assumed that the cause of the fire could have been an unextinguished cigarette. It turned out that the day before, most of the residents of the nursing home received a pension and allegedly some of them immediately “celebrated” this event. When firefighters arrived, according to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, some of the old people were drunk.

By the middle of yesterday, all the evacuated nursing home residents were returned to their homes. The fire victims were housed on the first two floors of the building, which were almost undamaged by the fire. The staff was going to work on the third floor in the coming days - those rooms that were not damaged by the fire would just need to be washed.

Eduard LOMOVTSEV