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Dozens missing in Russian psychiatric hospital fire Dozens missing in Russian psychiatric hospital fire
(35 minutes later)
Thirty-seven people were missing after a fire early on Friday at a psychiatric hospital in north-western Russia, an emergency ministries official said. A fire raged through a Russian psychiatric hospital on Friday, killing at least one person and leaving dozens missing as police searched the surrounding area for survivors, emergency and law enforcement officials said.
The official, Oleg Voronov, said on Ekho Moskvy radio that some of the missing may have escaped the hospital in the Novgorod region and survived, but Itar-Tass news agency cited a regional official as saying at least 14 people were killed. The pre-dawn fire at a ward for severely ill patients was the second deadly blaze at a psychiatric hospital in Russia this year and is likely to prompt criticism of the state over its treatment of the mentally ill and other vulnerable citizens.
The fire destroyed a building housing male patients at the hospital in the village of Luka, state-run RIA reported. Emergency authorities had recently sought to have the building condemned as unfit for use, a senior official said.
"According to the latest information, there were about 60 people in the building, 20 of them were led out by the administration," Voronov said. "The fate of 37 is unknown. But this does not mean that they died." He said they might have left the building on their own. An orderly died while trying to save patents at the hospital in the Novgorod region town of Luka, the federal investigative committee said. It said 35 people were unaccounted for. The emergency situations ministry put that number at 37.
"Everything has collapsed inside as a result of the fire," a local police source told RIA. "The people believed to be inside are now most likely dead." Some of the missing may have escaped the hospital, ministry official Oleg Voronov said on Ekho Moskvy radio, but Itar-Tass news agency cited an unidentified regional official as saying at least 14 people died.
Investigators say the pre-dawn blaze may have been caused by a patient setting a bed on fire, the Interfax news agency reported. The fire gutted a single-story building housing male patients at the hospital in the village of Luka, state-run RIA reported. Voronov said there were about 60 people in the building, most of them patients, when it broke out. Officials said more than 20 patients were evacuated.
At least 19 serioues fires have been reported in Russian medical facilities in the past seven years. Investigators suspect the blaze was caused by a patient setting a bed on fire, Interfax news agency reported, but regional governor Sergei Mitin said it might have been accidental.
In April 36 people died in a fire at a psychiatric hospital outside Moscow. "Medical personnel saw a patient who was shrouded in flames ... It's possible that he was smoking in bed and the mattress caught fire," Mitin said, according to Interfax. He said the ward that caught fire housed severely ill patients.
Emergency officials and prosecutors had sought to have the building condemned as unsafe, but a court instead ordered management to correct unspecified flaws by August 2014, the head of safety oversight for the ministry said.
"The building that burned was unfit for use," the official, Yuri Deshevykh, told Itar-Tass.
There have been many fires with high death tolls at state institutions such as hospitals, schools, drug treatment centres and homes for the disabled in the past decade, raising questions about safety measures, conditions and emergency exit routes.
In April, a fire at a psychiatric hospital outside Moscow killed 38 people.
Yuri Savenko, president of the independent psychiatric association of Russia, said after that fire the dilapidated state of psychiatric hospitals was pushing death tolls in such incidents up. He said a third of the buildings at such facilities had been declared unfit for use since 2000.
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