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36 Killed in Fire at Russian Hospital 38 Killed in Fire at Russian Hospital
(about 5 hours later)
MOSCOW — A fire in a psychiatric hospital outside Moscow killed at least 36 people, most of them patients confined in the building because of their mental ailments, Russian news agencies reported early on Friday. MOSCOW — A fire raged through a wood-and-brick psychiatric hospital outside Moscow early on Friday morning, killing 38 people, mostly patients who died in their beds as firefighters made the hourlong journey from the nearest station, safety officials said.
The building that went up in flames housed Psychiatric Hospital No. 14 in the town of Ramensky, near Moscow. The Interfax news agency reported that it was a “special regime” hospital, meaning that patients were not free to leave. A nurse tried to extinguish the fire and evacuate patients, but it spread so quickly through the 73-year-old structure that she was able to lead only one patient to safety before the building was consumed, according to Yuri Deshovykh, director of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry’s oversight department, in comments to the Interfax news agency. Of the 41 people in the building, only 3 survived.
It is unclear whether this was a factor in the high death toll, as it has been in past fires in psychiatric institutions in Russia. The region’s acting governor, Andrei Vorobyov, said that the nearest fire station was a 40-minute drive from the clinic, and that although a fire alarm went off and a nurse tried to wake and evacuate patients, the fire spread very rapidly within the building. Fires in Russian nursing homes and medical facilities have repeatedly resulted in dozens of deaths, in some cases because their patients were locked in.
“Some windows were fitted with security bars, but some were not,” Mr. Vorobyov told Interfax. “It is up to investigators to find out whether the presence of these bars were a factor or not.” Investigators said on Friday, however, that the patients in Psychiatric Hospital No. 14, in the village of Ramensky, were not locked in and could have left the building if they had woken up. More than two-thirds of the patients regularly took powerful antipsychotic medications before going to bed, Veronika Skvortsova, Russia’s health minister, told reporters. Most died of burns or carbon monoxide poisoning.
By midmorning on Friday, investigators had identified 20 victims. “All victims were found in their beds,” Mr. Deshovykh said. “There was no one in the corridor. Even the dead bodies of two nurses were found in their recreation room.”
Though patients are typically confined behind barred windows, Russia’s overall lax culture of fire safety means few plans are made for emergency exits. A stream of officials visited the site of the fire, which President Vladimir V. Putin called an “awful tragedy which took many lives.” Mr. Putin ordered his subordinates to begin sweeping checks of medical facilities, calling the fire “yet another reminder that safety must be taken seriously.”
The fire began in an outbuilding to the main wood-and-brick hospital at about 2 a.m., Interfax reported. When firefighters arrived the building was in flames. The press service of the Interior Ministry of Moscow said 36 people had died while 38 people had been in the building. Two people jumped from a window, the agency reported. Russia’s overall lax culture of fire safety means few plans are made for emergency exits, and Mr. Deshovykh said that the most recent fire safety inspection, conducted in January 2012, found several violations, including bare bulbs in lamps and poor conditions in a pond of water used for extinguishing fires.
Fires claim a sad and steady death toll in Russia, far higher than in developed countries. Fire exits are locked, blocked by boxes in storage or simply nonexistent. Barred windows in nursing homes and hospitals have been the cause of horrendous death tolls, as have fires in student dormitories. A fatalistic Russian shrug or a bribe to fire inspectors are all too common responses to dangers. Irina Gumennaya, a spokeswoman for the Russian Investigative Committee, said the fire started on a sofa, and investigators suspect that it was started by a recovering addict who smoked surreptitiously to alleviate withdrawal symptoms. She said one of the survivors “woke after smelling smoke, then heard some scratching sounds and ran out of the burning building.”
Earlier this spring the building of one of Russia’s most prestigious theater schools burned, though with no casualties; the attic had been packed with drapes, costumes and the tinder of wooden set materials, all of which burned vigorously and quickly. “That is why we believe that careless handling of fire, including as a result of smoking, was the most likely cause of the blaze,” Ms. Gumennaya said.
Investigators are exploring several potential causes, including arson, carelessness — perhaps with a cigarette — and poorly maintained electronic equipment. Fires are a plague in Russia, which has high rates of alcoholism and smoking, dilapidated firefighting equipment, aging electrical and heating systems, and widespread violations of safety codes. Recent analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the death from fires was more than 10 times the rate typical of Western Europe and the United States.

Ellen Barry contributed reporting from Moscow.

Vladimir P. Lukin, Russia’s human rights commissioner, said on Friday that rights activists had put forward scores of proposals for establishing oversight mechanisms for psychiatric facilities, but that they have typically foundered in what he called “the notorious bureaucratic circle.”
“Of course, criminal liability for what has happened can only be a result of a thorough and objective investigation of this drama,” he told Interfax. “However, the feeling remains that the Ramensky tragedy is in line with the context of an overall civic disease: indifference to all human problems but your own.”