MOSCOW — Fire tore through a nursing home in Russia, trapping patients in fast-moving flames and choking smoke at a facility cited for numerous safety violations including no fire alarm, officials said Monday. At least 31 people were killed.
The fire broke out Sunday afternoon in the two-story home for the elderly and invalids in the town of Velye-Nikolskoye, about 155 miles south of Moscow. It spread quickly through the 55-year-old brick building, where the wooden interior walls burned fast, Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Viktor Beltsov said.
More than 250 people escaped or were evacuated, officials said. Some jumped from windows, and a nurse described frantic efforts to save bedridden patients — though emergency officials blamed personnel for the high death toll.
A short circuit apparently caused the fire, officials said. Survivors said a ceiling lamp on the second floor started smoking and fell to the floor, which caught fire, the state-run RIA-Novosti news agency quoted Russia’s top fire safety official, Yuri Nenashev, as saying.
Nenashev faulted personnel for beginning evacuation efforts on the first floor rather than the second floor, where the fire started, RIA-Novosti reported.
Valentina Chernikova, a nurse, said employees did their best to evacuate patients, many of whom were bedridden.
“They had to be carried out on stretchers, on gurneys, pushed through windows. I think we did this very quickly,” Chernikova said on state-run Vesti-24 television.
Firefighters were alerted half an hour after the fire broke out, and arrived five minutes later to find that the blaze had already spread over 10,000 square feet, Beltsov said.
Twice in the past year following inspections, fire authorities appealed to courts to order the facility shut down because of “glaring violations” of fire safety rules, Beltsov said. He said the building had no fire alarm and no system that would automatically alert the fire department of a blaze.
The nursing home had also been warned to replace its electrical system because it was a fire hazard, Nenashev was quoted as saying.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
