Reuters, Moscow :
At least 64 people, including 41 children, have been killed in a blaze that engulfed a shopping mall in a Russian industrial city, the Emergencies Minister said Monday.
The inferno ripped through the top floor of the four-story commercial complex in the city of Kemerovo, located in southern Siberia around 3,000 kilometers east of Moscow.
Minister Vladimir Puchkov said firefighters and emergency services were risking their lives in the rescue efforts, as the mall’s infrastructure was severely damaged by the fire, which has not yet been fully been extinguished.
Svetlana Petrenko, spokesperson for Russia’s investigative committee (ICR), said four people had been detained in connection with an investigation into the fire, including the owner of the locale where the fire originated.
Puchkov earlier said 12 people were hospitalized while 36 needed medical assistance.
Authorities and investigators were working to establish what started the fire, but preliminary inquiries suggested the fire alarm did not go off and shoppers were not aware of the flames until the building was full of smoke.
Some 1,500 square meters of the 23,000 square meter mall were destroyed.
The fire swept through the Winter Cherry mall’s entertainment complex while scores of people were attending screenings at its multiplex cinema, Russian news agency TASS reported.
Videos posted on social media showed people jumping from windows to escape the heat and thick black smoke as firefighters fought for 17 hours to extinguish the flames.
Andrei Mamchenkov, deputy head of Russia’s National Crisis Management Centre, said 41 children were unaccounted for.The cause of the fire, which started on the top floor of the four-story building at around 5 p.m. local time on Sunday, is not yet known. Yevgeny Dedyukhin, deputy head of the Kemerovo region emergency department, told the BBC, “The shopping center is a very complex construction. There are a lot of combustible materials.” He said the fire covered an area of approximately 16,145 square feet.
Though firefighters managed to extinguish the blaze, they struggled to reach the upper floors of the building due to collapsed floors and ceilings. TASS quoted deputy emergencies minister Vladlen Aksyonov, who said that the ceilings of two out of three cinema halls had collapsed on those inside.Four people were detained for questioning over the fire, including the owner of the mall and the head of the company that manages the complex. Witnesses told several Russian news agencies that the mall’s fire alarms did not go off even as thick smoke filled the upper floors, The Guardian said. The resulting panic turned the evacuation into a stampede.
According to Reuters, Vladimir Putin expressed “his deep condolences to the relatives and loved ones of those who died” in a statement issued by the Kremlin.
Aman Tuleyev, governor of the Kemerovo region, said the families of the dead would receive 1 million rubles ($17,530) in compensation for each family member they lost. The governor said that one of his own relatives had died in the fire, “and unfortunately this relative was a little girl.”
Kemerovo has a population of around 550,000 and is an important coal-producing area some 2,200 miles east of Moscow. The mall, which opened in 2013, also contains restaurants, a sauna, a bowling alley and a petting zoo.
A fire that engulfed a shopping center complex in the Russian town of Kemerovo has claimed 64 lives, with at least nine children among the dead, according to the latest reports. Several people are still missing, and at least 11 have been hospitalized.
The fire started during a busy Sunday afternoon at the Winter Cherry complex in Siberia, which houses cinemas, shops, bowling alleys, an ice rink and a petting zoo. The roof of the cinemas reportedly collapsed as the fire took hold and swept through the mall’s upper floors.
Firefighters put out the blaze, but it reignited and emergency services struggled to reach the upper parts of the complex because of the collapsed roof, Reuters reported.
Local reports suggest that the center’s fire alarms did not go off as smoke filled parts of the facility. Pictures showed people jumping from the top floor to escape the blaze.
The cause of the fire is not yet known, but early suspicions focused on a possible electrical fault. The manager of the firm that owns the center and three others have been held for questioning, Russian authorities said.
Kemerovo is a coal-mining town 2,200 miles east of Moscow. The Winter Cherry center opened in 2013.
