More than 40 killed in Russian shopping center fire

[Meatpie]

At least 37 people are reported to have died in a fire that tore through a shopping centre in the Siberian city of Kemerovo.

Russian media say dozens more are missing, children believed to be among them.

The blaze started on an upper floor of the Winter Cherry complex and many of the victims were in a cinema.

Video posted on social media showed people jumping from windows to escape the flames on Sunday.

Smoke billowed from windows as fire crews worked to evacuate the property.

Kemerovo, a key coal-producing area, lies about 3,600km (2,200 miles) east of Moscow.

The complex, which was opened in 2013, includes movie theatres, restaurants, a sauna, a bowling alley and a children's zoo.

 

[Meatpie]

Photo Gallery

The number of people killed may surpass 60 as many still remain missing.

 

[Meatpie]

Latest

Some news sites now report number of dead is over 170 dead many children among the victims.

More than 200 animals were burnt alive in a zoo located inside the mall.

More updataes in the next 10 minutes.

 

[Meatpie]

Exclusive photos from a few minutes ago

Emergency services set up a tent late in the evening outside the still burning shopping mall

Corpses in black body bags pile up in the street outside the shopping mall in Kemerovo ready to be loaded into large trucks and transported to morgue.

Some news websites in Russia now report that the number of victims may surpass 200 with many children among the victims.

Bodies of victims piled up in black body bags ready to be transported to morgue via trucks

Next update in 10 minutes.

 

[deaddirty]

The Guardian is saying at least 37 dead, but 40 children missing or dead. Since they are careful about fact-checking they're probably slower to update than some sites - I think they'll be wanting to see a figure from at least two reputable Russian sources before they quote it.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-shopping-mall-leaves-at-least-37-people-dead



Fire in Siberian shopping mall leaves at least 37 people dead

Authorities say 40 children among missing or dead after mystery blaze in Kemerovo

Flames leap from the Zimnyaya Vishnya shopping complex in Kemerovo. Photograph: Danil Aikin/TASS
At least 37 people were killed and dozens more were unaccounted for on Sunday after a fire tore through a shopping mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo.
Citing local authorities, the Russian news agency Tass said 40 of those either dead or missing were children.
The investigative committee, which looks into high-profile crimes and reports directly to the president, Vladimir Putin, said as many as 35 people could be missing.
News agencies said more than 100 people had been evacuated from the mall, which contains cinemas, restaurants and shops.
There was no immediate indication of the cause of the fire. Television pictures showed people jumping from the windows of the mall, which was engulfed in black smoke.
Kemerovo is a coal-producing region about 2,200 miles east of Moscow.

 

[Meatpie]

Firefighters have been battling the blaze for more than 13 hours now and are still unable to bring it under control. A large number of people remain unaccounted for including many children presumed dead after roof collapse trapped many in movie theatre inside the shopping mall.

 

[Meatpie]

Emergency services now say there is a serious risk the entire building can start to collapse after the intense heat weakened the structure and roofs collapsed onto peple in a movie theatre inside the mall.

Some ares of the building are still unaccessible to firefighters.

 

[Meatpie]

Photos of missing people apread on social media website VK

Some 43 people were injured in the blaze, according to the emergency services, and 37 remain hospitalized. Some 69 people, including 40 children are still missing. Fears are growing that almost an entire class of primary school children may have perished in the blaze. Eight kids from a school outside Kemerovo were visiting the city on an excursion with a teacher who led them to watch a cartoon show at the shopping mall. Russian media reports suggest that she chose to have a stroll through the mall and left the children unattended at the cinema and when panic spread they couldn't find their way out.

Some of the children trapped in the mall reportedly phoned their parents or contacted their friends on social media. A particularly chilling message circulating online was allegedly left by a 13-year-old girl who wrote “We are on fire. Possibly goodbye” in a screenshot posted on Russian social media network VKontakte. The teen was listed as missing in unofficial lists posted online.

 

[Meatpie]

Firefighters have manged to bring the blaze under control after more than 13 hours.

 

[Meatpie]

15 bodies were found trapped near an exit door.

 

[Demon]

Already 53 dead.

 

[Meatpie]

Death toll has risen further with at least 64 corpses. Meanwhile an Instagram post from Kemerovo showed a big queue of volunteers waiting to donate blood at a clinic.

11-year-old boy whose parents and siblings died in the fire jumped from 4th floor and survived.

 

[Meatpie]

RIA NEWS AGENCY: Russia's Kemerovo fire death toll among the biggest in the country's history and the biggest in the last 100 years. The building is still smouldering. Photo was posted online showing the situation inside of the mall when the fire broke out.



Complete roof failure over two cinemas is seen in photos from drone released a few minutes ago.

 

[Meatpie]

Parents pushed their children from windows

The fate of an 11-year-old boy who was filmed falling from 4th floor is uncear but locals told Ruptly that he is in coma. “He is in an induced coma, his entire body is broken,” a crying woman said on camera, speaking about her friend’s grandson called Sergey. The woman said that his father pushed the boy out of the window while he and his wife and their four-year-old daughter all died in the blaze.

Video posted on YouTube from inside the mall shows thick smoke engulf people within seconds with no time to react or escape.

 

[New Yorker]

I have never been afraid of my own mortality. I have always been at peace with the inevitable fact that we all die eventually. I have always however been terrified of being burned alive or drowning. These two ways are so brutal and painful. I can't even imagine what it must be like when someone is stuck in a burning building with mo way out. I think the helplessness of knowing that the fire would eventually get to me is what horrifies me the most.

 

[alexonedeath]

This is too sad. I just heard on NPR that employees of the shopping center had disabled the fire alarm system and locked the exit doors. No suggestion was given for why such a crime would have been committed, but the perpetrators will hopefully be executed for this.

 

[New Yorker]

This is too sad. I just heard on NPR that employees of the shopping center had disabled the fire alarm system and locked the exit doors. No suggestion was given for why such a crime would have been committed, but the perpetrators will hopefully be executed for this.

It is not uncommon to hear that all emergency doors were locked in a tragedy like this. The excuse is always that whoever was in charge or owned the place did not want people to escape without paying for whateer they are carrying with them.

 

[alexonedeath]

I hadn't thought of that reason, but I can imagine people taking advantage of a crisis to shoplift, and I can imagine the owners trying to protect themselves from loss by locking the exits. Still, whoever locked those doors is in deep shit now. It's more difficult to explain the disabling of the fire alarms.

 

[New Yorker]

I hadn't thought of that reason, but I can imagine people taking advantage of a crisis to shoplift, and I can imagine the owners trying to protect themselves from loss by locking the exits. Still, whoever locked those doors is in deep shit now. It's more difficult to explain the disabling of the fire alarms.

Well, this happened in Russia so the owners may get away with murder if they have deep pockets.

Just to put this in perspective the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was a tragedy where nearly 150 garment works perished in NYC in 1911. The owners had the habit of locking all doors so that no worker would steal or try to leave work early. When the fire broke out, all exist were locked and a lot of people ended up suffocating or engulfed by the flames. There are accounts of people jumping into the elevator well just to land on top of the elevator. This tragedy caused an outcry for improved working conditions for factory workers in the early 20th century. Hopefully Russians will have the same reaction.

 

[Meatpie]

Morgue in Kemerovo after the fire