Fire kills 62 after alarms ignored

[Guest]

MOSCOW, Russia -- A night watchman ignored two fire alarms at a Russian old people's home where a blaze killed at least 62 people, emergency officials said.

The man only took action when he saw flames at the building, in the Kuban region of southern Russia, but staff failed to unlock a fire exit and firefighters took nearly an hour to arrive from the nearest town.

"Our ... information is that 62 people died, including one nurse," Tatiana Kobzarenko, a local ministry spokeswoman, told Reuters by telephone.

The fire started just after 1 a.m. (2200 GMT) on Tuesday when most of the residents at the care home would have been asleep.

One local man said he helped evacuate people from the two-story brick building in the Azov Sea coast village of Kamyshevatskaya.

"I rushed here, saw the flames and started to help people get out from the second floor," Yevgeny Solomin told NTV, according to Reuters.

"But what could we do?" he said. "Do you know how hard it is to get someone down a ladder from the second floor? If only firefighters had been here."

Emergency workers traveled to the scene from Yeisk, a town about 35 kilometers (22 miles) away, arriving nearly an hour later, Sergei Petrov, a duty officer at the Emergency Situations Ministry's southern branch told The Associated Press.

The fire was put out at about 5 a.m., he said.

The disaster prompted new concerns about safety in run-down state institutions. It came the day after an explosion at a Siberian coal mine killed at least 100 people in Russia's deadliest mining disaster in a decade.

Despite promises by central government of major cash investments, many health institutions are run down and fire regulations are routinely ignored.

A fire alarm system went off in the building three times, but a watchman -- at the site but outside the building -- ignored the first two alarms and reported the fire only when he saw flames, Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Veronika Smolskaya told AP.

Staff were also absent from their posts, hindering attempts to find keys and open an emergency exit, she added. Most of the victims probably died from smoke inhalation, the ITAR-Tass news agency said.

Those staff members in the building -- three orderlies and a nurse -- failed to quickly evacuate the elderly residents, Smolskaya said. NTV television reported that the nurse was among the dead.

Footage from the home shown on Rossiya television showed a blackened net curtain hanging by one corner in a second-floor window and a chamber pot lying amid charred rubble.

"Our preliminary information is that the fire could have been caused by carelessness, a short circuit or arson. Specialists will be working to establish the actual cause," Sergei Kudinov, a local Emergencies Ministry official said in televised remarks.

Copyright 2007 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.

[Stepjam 118]

This is the country that brought us Chernobyl.

[RWC130 594]

I saw this on CW11 this morning.

They don't have a Fire Department? It took ONE HOUR for the

nearest FD to respond?

WOW!!!!!!!!!

[RC2389 0]

"Our preliminary information is that the fire could have been caused by carelessness, a short circuit or arson. Specialists will be working to establish the actual cause," Sergei Kudinov, a local Emergencies Ministry official said in televised remarks.

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Maybe it's just me, but what they really need to be investigating first is why the personnel weren't at their posts, why they didn't properly evacuate everybody, and why the guard ignored the alarm for so long.