Fireman: all emergency exits in the "Winter Cherry" were closed

The administration and security of the burned-out Zimnyaya Vishnya shopping center in Kemerovo were not on site when firefighters arrived, said an Emergencies Ministry employee who participated in extinguishing the fire.

Photo: mchs.gov.ru

All emergency exits were closed, there was no emergency lighting, writes the Air Force, referring to the website of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, a statement by the head of the fire fighting service Andrei Bursin.

According to him, the management of the shopping center and the guards were obliged to meet rescuers, but they did not.

“We immediately began evacuating, shouting: “Evacuate!” But there was no administration or security when the firefighters arrived, at least none of them met us, no one could say whether there were people inside and how many there were,” said the firefighter.

According to him, firefighters immediately went to the fourth floor, where the fire was located. “There was already very heavy smoke there, it was almost impossible to navigate. Nothing can be seen at arm's length, the temperature is very high. The fire was spreading rapidly,” Bursin recalls.

He believes that voids in the ceilings and old ventilation contributed to the rapid fire. In addition, there were some cylinders in the building that had to be taken out and cooled. “There was one explosion,” Bursin said.

By the time the 13 firefighters arrived, there were people on the roof, one man was found alive on the fourth floor, and one woman was pulled out of a locked elevator, the fireman said.

Who locked the doors?

On Thursday, a resident of Kemerovo, Igor Vostrikov, who had lost his entire family during a fire, published a video message in which he stated that the doors to the cinema hall where spectators died, allegedly locked one of the visitors to the shopping center.

According to Vostrikov, he gained access to surveillance cameras and saw on the recording how, due to heavy smoke during the fire, an unknown man locked the door in one room in order to “fill up the cracks and wait for rescuers.”

“By the time they got to the exit, there was already thick smoke in the corridor, absolutely impenetrable. And some man decided to lock the door, seal the cracks and wait for rescuers. But the rescuers, as you know, did not arrive there.”

Earlier it was suggested that the visitors of one of the cinema halls could not be saved, since the door to it was locked from the outside.

After the fire, five people were arrested, including a security guard, a director of the building’s owner, a tenant of the premises where the fire was allegedly the epicenter, as well as an employee and the head of the organization that served the fire alarm system.

The general director of "Winter Cherry" Nadezhda Suddenok Photo: mk.ru

They were charged under the articles “causing death by negligence”, “violation of fire safety requirements resulting in the death of two or more persons”, “provision of services that do not meet safety requirements”. They all deny guilt.

Fire in the Kemerovo shopping center "Winter Cherry" happened 25 March and took the lives of 64 people. 28 March in Russia was mourned for the dead.

Putin arrived in Kemerovo early in the morning of March 27, when a rally of thousands of victims and citizens was held there. He drove through the blocked streets, alone laid flowers at the memorial at the place of people's deaths, then met with officials and a small "initiative group" of the relatives of the victims.

28 March it became known that the Basmanny Court of Moscow ruled arrest in absentia Nikita Kuvikov, a citizen of Ukraine, known by his pseudonym Yevgeny Volnov, who for his channel on YouTube called government offices during a fire in the Kemerovo shopping center and, posing as an EMERCOM employee, spoke about the 300 of the victims

Read also on ForumDaily:

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

Three people were found alive who were considered missing in a fire in Kemerovo

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

The author of the false news about the hundreds who died in Kemerovo was put on the international wanted list.

“Don’t make the Americans happy”: in Kemerovo, a woman called for hiding the death toll. VIDEO

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