Suicide blaze kills 9 in Russian nursing home
MOSCOW – A despondent 86-year-old man apparently doused himself in gasoline and set off a fire Monday that killed nine people in a Russian nursing home, investigators said.
Daria Korovina, a spokeswoman for the regional Emergencies Ministry, said two others were injured in the fire at the facility in Vishny Volochek, 120 miles (200 kilometers) north of Moscow. Some 480 people had to be evacuated, she said.
The prosecutor-general's Investigative Committee, Russia's top investigative body, said a preliminary inspection showed that the nursing home resident committed suicide by self-immolation, starting a blaze that killed eight others in neighboring rooms from smoke and gas inhalation.
The state news agency ITAR-Tass reported the man was believed to be upset because he could not get an apartment of his own under a program for World War II veterans.
Russia records nearly 18,000 fire deaths a year, several times the per-capita rate in the United States and other Western countries. The country suffers frequent fires at hospitals, schools and other state-run facilities, with many blamed on negligence and violations of fire safety rules. The fires have served as grim reminders of Russia's crumbling infrastructure.
In this case, however, the head of the Emergencies Ministry's supervision department, Yuri Deshevykh, was quoted by ITAR-Tass as saying the nursing home's fire-alarm system, installed this year, had functioned properly. The Investigative Committee said the seven-st [...]
No comments:
Post a Comment