64 dead and 16 missing: 10 facts as corruption and irresponsibility led to the tragedy in Kemerovo

64 dead and 16 missing, two in serious condition in resuscitation - these are the officially reported data on fire victims in shopping center "Winter Cherry" in the Russian Kemerovo.

Photo: censor.net

This is the second most fires in the history of the Russian Federation. Among the dead are dozens of children. The threat of disaster is quite real in other cities and other shopping centers. Yuri Butusov for Censor.net He described what facts and conclusions became known from the reports of Russian law enforcement agencies and the media, which are important to understand in this situation, not only in Russia, but also in Ukraine.

1. The Winter Cherry shopping center was located in the building of a former confectionery factory built in the 70s: in 2013 it was rebuilt from an old two-story center into a four-story center. In 2003 and 2013, there were already fires in the building, a partial collapse of the roof occurred, and a person died in the second fire. But all construction and fire inspectors signed certificates that the building was in order. The fire services did not make any safety claims. As it has now become clear, gross violations were committed during the construction and operation of the building. Obviously this is the result of corruption.

2. Fire safety inspections of “Winter Cherry” have not been carried out at all over the past three years, since the huge building with an area of ​​20 thousand square meters is officially registered as... a small business facility, and therefore it was subject to “supervisory holidays” - a moratorium on any inspections of operating rules ! This was announced by the chief state fire inspector of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Rinat Enikeev. Neither those who made the decision nor those who controlled them were surprised by such a large “small business”. Obviously, obtaining such a status for a large building was only possible as a result of corruption.

Photo: censor.net

3. The owner of Winter Cherry is Russian billionaire Denis Shtengelov, founder of the KDV-group company, whose fortune is estimated at more than $1 billion. KDV-Group, of course, has strong ties with the political leadership of the Russian Federation, and since its founding it has enjoyed the support of the ex-governor of the Tomsk region, Victor Kress. The owner of the shopping center Shtengelov does not live in Russia - in 2010 he became a citizen of Australia, where he built a state-of-the-art ski resort, golf club and tennis academy - where he vacations with his family. But Shtengelov saved a lot on the construction of the “Winter Cherry”.

Photo: censor.net

Photo: censor.net

4. The third and fourth floors of “Winter Cherry” were leased by the general director of the shopping center Yulia Bogdanova to “Winter Cherry Kemerovo” LLC. The general director and owner of this company is Nadezhda Suddenok. Suddenok was once a deputy of the district council of the ruling United Russia party. None of the building owners, directors, or tenants at the moment sees any blame for the tragedy; they blame each other and transfer responsibility to each other. Shtengelov does not intend to return to Russia to participate in investigative actions. He announced the allocation of compensation of 3 million rubles for each deceased. If he had allocated several tens of millions for security in advance, the tragedy would not have happened at all.

Photo: censor.net

5. The security of “Winter Cherry” was to be ensured by a private security company, where the fire safety specialist was Alexander Nikitin, with a diploma as a cook. The company's employees did not have security guard licenses, but actually performed their functions without undergoing any special training. After the fire alarm went off, the security officer himself turned it off so as not to disrupt the work of the shopping center. The security guards did not notify visitors about the start of the fire and did not order them to leave the building. People realized this themselves, but it was too late. There were only three guards, they didn’t understand what to do, and didn’t think that there were people locked in the cinema hall. Two security guards stood at the exit from the cinema and for the first minutes did not allow people to come down. The guards feared not for people's lives, but for the fact that the property of the shopping center would be damaged, things would disappear, and someone would not pay. As a result, each visitor escaped as best he could. The guards never opened the fire exits or provided assistance to the arriving rescuers. Several people, cut off from the main exit by the fire, jumped from the fourth floor and at least one child died as a result of the jump, another was seriously injured.

Photo: censor.net

6. The killing rule in the cinema for the controllers was to close the cinema halls and leave them. That is what led to such massive sacrifices in two cinema halls. The administration did not conduct full-fledged training, preparation for emergency situations was absent. The controllers, as it turned out, always closed both cinema halls with a key for the duration of the film show, so that the stowaways would not enter the halls, but leave for another time during the session. As a result, after the start of the fire, the controllers did not return to the halls and did not open the doors. The staff of the mall abandoned visitors, saving their lives, and showed cowardice and irresponsibility. There were no fire extinguishing equipment in the halls themselves, there were no tools, and the visitors could not knock out the cinema door from the inside.

Photo: censor.net

7. The rescue operation was doomed to failure due to monstrous violations during construction. The probable cause of fire at the moment, the consequence involves the closure of the wiring. The sprinkler fire extinguishing system in the building did not work, the smoke removal system did not work - they had to work according to the rules on such a large facility. A large number of flammable materials, plastic, which emitted dense toxic smoke when burning, were used in the construction of the building: even when people tried to breathe through wetted clothes, they did not succeed. The rescue operation had to be interrupted because the fire very quickly damaged the weak floors of the building. The roof collapsed, and then the entire supporting structure, and the rescuers left the building and failed to get to the smoke-filled cinema.

Photo: censor.net

8. Fire trucks arrived at the scene of the tragedy in 40 minutes - too late. The calculations did not know the plan of the building and were not ready for independent work at the facility. As a result, the rescuers lost time and did not go to the cinema halls in which the majority of the victims died. Rescuers began to flood the roof of the building, and this had no effect on the spread of fire in the interior and in the cinema halls.

9. The people themselves, visitors to the cinema, were completely unprepared for action in a critical situation. Some parents made independent attempts to break through to the children alone, but they got poisoned, some of them died. Most visitors did not show mutual help, trying to save themselves and not helping others. Attempts to open the hall in the first critical 20 minutes of fire outside no one carried out. Panicked, the father of three children, whom he left in the cinema, smashed the window, thinking that it would pull the smoke out of the room - and in fact it increased the spread of fire. The visitors in a panic left the shopping center and blocked the entrance to the building of firefighters with their cars.

10. Political responsibility. The governor of the Kemerovo region, Aman Tuleyev, lost his 11-year-old cousin in a fire. But he did not come to the scene of the tragedy during the fire. Tuleyev has ruled the Kemerovo region continuously since 1997 - 21 years, and always wins all elections here with huge results. On election day in the Russian Federation, March 18, in order to get people to the polling stations and show Putin a high turnout, flyers were distributed at polling stations in Kemerovo with discounts for visiting various entertainments, including Winter Cherry. Deputy Governor of the Kemerovo Region Vladimir Chernov immediately stated that one of the children could have set fire to the foam filling in the trampoline pool, and this became the source of the fire. During the fire at the Lame Horse club in Perm in 2009, 156 people died. Mass checks were also carried out at that time, but their effectiveness turned out to be highly controversial. The state fire inspector of the Perm region, who supervised the inspections of the club, was then sentenced to only a fine. In Tuleyev’s estate, the involvement of government officials in the tragedy is not currently being considered.

Read also on ForumDaily:

The main thing about the fire in the shopping center Kemerovo: two days after the tragedy

What to do in case of a fire in a public place: a reminder that can save your life

How many actually died in the Kemerovo cinema: data cashiers

Our children were burning, and we just watched: witnesses and victims of the tragedy in Kemerovo

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