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38 Killed in Fire at Russian Psychiatric Hospital Fire in Russian Psychiatric Hospital That Killed 38 Stirs Anger Over State’s Neglect
(about 11 hours later)
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. MOSCOW — When flames shot out of Psychiatric Hospital No. 14 at 2 a.m. on Friday, people in the village of Ramensky crept as close as they could, knowing that patients and medical staff were probably trapped inside. But fire raged through the 73-year-old wooden building, and there was nothing to put it out with.
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, Yuri Deshovykh, director of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry’s oversight department, told the Interfax news agency. Of the 41 people in the building, only 3 survived. “What could you do?” one neighbor told a television crew. “You couldn’t help them with a bucket of water from a ditch. There was no hose, no hydrant.”
Fires in Russian nursing homes and medical facilities have repeatedly resulted in dozens of deaths, in some cases because their patients were locked in. An alarm had sounded at the nearest fire station 30 miles away, across a rain-swollen canal with a ferry that will not operate until summer. So the firefighters took a long detour, and arrived an hour later.
However, investigators said 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 morning, the hospital was nothing but black walls and a row of bed frames filled with ashes. A spokeswoman for the Investigative Committee said many of the dead had been burned alive.
“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.” Friday’s fire, which killed 38, was a reminder of the decay and neglect that plagues life in much of Russia, despite a decade-long, oil-fueled economic revival.
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 rate of deaths in fires has been dropping gradually, but as of 2008 remained above 8 per 100,000 citizens, compared to roughly 1 per 100,000 in Greece, Denmark, the United States or the United Kingdom, according to a report by the Geneva Association, which analyzes international fire statistics.
Russia’s overall lax culture of fire safety means that few plans are made for emergency exits, and Mr. Deshovykh said 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. Firefighters traveled from a station 30 miles away, but it took them an hour — three times the response time allowed by the state — in part because a nearby canal was swollen from spring flooding, and they were forced to make a large circle to cross it. The Russian government reported 12,000 deaths from fire in 2011; the same year, 2,500 people died in fires in the United States, which has twice the population of Russia.
Irina Gumennaya, a spokeswoman for the Russian Investigative Committee, the main federal investigating authority in Russia, 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.” Decrepit, underfinanced institutions have been the sites of some of Russia’s worst tragedies in recent years. Yuri S. Savenko, the president of the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia, said one-third of the country’s psychiatric hospitals have been declared unfit, and that small hospitals in villages were especially neglected. Pay for staffers is miserly — typically around $170 a month. Mr. Savenko said he was aware of 15 similar fires over the last year.
“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. Among the 38 people who died in the fire, 11 had no known friends or relatives, making identification difficult, Ms. Skvortsova said. “This is not the first time it has happened,” he said. “It is really terrible when 38 people burn alive; it shocks you. But over the last 25 years these catastrophes have taken on a regular character.”
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. From 2006 to 2008, Russia’s rate of death from fire was more than 8 per 100,000, compared with about 1 per 100,000 in Greece, Denmark, the United States and the United Kingdom, according to a report by the Geneva Association, which analyzes international fire statistics. The fire captured the Kremlin’s attention early in the day, and a stream of high-ranking officials were sent to the scene, about 70 miles north of Moscow. President Vladimir V. Putin, who once watched his summer cottage destroyed by fire while firefighters wrestled with their equipment, called it “yet another reminder that safety must be taken seriously.”
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 had typically foundered in “the notorious bureaucratic circle.” But many, especially critics of the government, said Russia’s bureaucracy has routinely halted attempts to establish effective oversight mechanisms.
“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.” “Criminal liability for what has happened can only be a result of a thorough and objective investigation of this drama,” said Vladimir P. Lukin, Russia’s human rights commissioner. “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.”
Psychiatric Hospital No. 14 was a locked facility that housed people with schizophrenia, mental retardation and drug and alcohol addiction. Around half of them took powerful antipsychotic medications at bedtime to help them sleep, officials said.
Irina Gumennaya, a spokeswoman for the Russian Investigative Committee, said investigators believed the fire started on a sofa, perhaps by a recovering addict who smoked cigarettes surreptitiously.
A nurse woke and tried to evacuate the patients, but was able to lead only one woman, who had a diagnosis of schizophrenia, to safety. Another patient left on his own. The remaining 38 died of burns or carbon monoxide poisoning, many still in their beds. Among them, 11 had no known relatives, making DNA identification difficult, said Veronika Skvortsova, Russia’s health minister.
“It was a fatal situation,” Ms. Skvortsova said. “The people who were next to the door were able to save themselves.”
Television crews swarmed Ramensky on Friday, and villagers, often refusing to give their names, complained that firefighters arrived late and unprepared.
Vadim Belovoshin, an emergency services official, acknowledged grimly that it had taken firefighters more than an hour to travel from their station, 30 miles away, because “the ferry across the canal isn’t working, so it was necessary to go around.”
But he suggested that the building would have burned anyway.
“You have to understand, this was a log house, with wooden walls and a wooden roof, covered with corrugated fiberglass, it catches fire immediately,” Mr. Belovoshin told a news crew.
By evening, prosecutors had opened a criminal investigation, and a flurry of new initiatives had been announced.
Parliament ordered inspections of psychiatric hospitals, and the chief of Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry proposed fire safety “subbotniki,” in which citizens devote their holidays to days of mass, Soviet-style volunteer work.
Mr. Savenko, however, said he did not expect the Russian authorities to embrace systemic change.
“They’re used to it,” Mr. Savenko said. “They know how to turn around and blame people around the edges, the little fish, as we say. It is right before our eyes, and of course the people are outraged; they understand everything correctly.
“But for now, tension will continue to build, because nothing will be done.”