In the past few weeks, Russia has shut down almost a third of its shopping malls for safety violations

Inspections carried out by the Emergency Situations Ministry after March’s deadly fire in Kemerovo have led to the temporary closure of almost a third of all shopping centers in Russia, according to the newspaper Kommersant. Almost half of the closed malls are relatively small shopping areas built or last remodeled in the 1990s. Sources told the newspaper that the closures could cost businesses more than half a billion rubles ($7.9 million) a month in lost revenues.

Business owners in Khabarovsk and Ulyanovsk are organizing and demanding that the federal government provide a schedule for follow-up inspections with the promise that shopping centers can reopen, if they remove any safety code violations.

On March 25, a fire at a shopping center in Kemerovo killed 60 people, including 40 children. The mall was apparently riddled with fire safety violations, and Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry announced a series of nationwide inspections after the tragedy. In mid-April, the agency said it had discovered fire-safety violations at half of the shopping centers it inspected.