#544, Tuesday, February 22, 2000 - Source URL : http://www.sptimes.ru/archive/times/544/news/n_fire.htm - NEWS - 3 Firefighters Perish in Factory Inferno - By Vita Bekker - STAFF WRITER - photo by Sergey Grachev
Three firemen were killed and six injured, one still in a critical condition, in a fire that broke out Sunday night in a three-story building on Sverdlovskoya Embankment in St. Petersburg.
The fire started around 2 a.m. in the guards' room of Tayras-Fenix, a firm that produces wrapping and packing materials, said police Monday.
According to police reports, the fire reached level five under the fire department's classification system, the most serious. The blaze was made worse by the guards trying to extinguish it themselves and only calling the fire department later.
With 200 fire fighters on the scene, one wall of the building and the roof of one floor collapsed. This was caused by the weight of a superstructure built on top of the building by the company last year - a construction that was made after the fire department's last inspection and without the department's permission.
The city prosecutor has opened a criminal investigation into the fire. Police said in a special briefing on Monday that although the blaze started in the guards' room, the actual cause of the fire has not yet been established.
In the past few years, property fires have become a serious problem in Russia, with 260,000 breaking out last year, killing 14,861 people, said Gen. Lt. Yevgeny Serebrenikov, head of the Interior Ministry's fire department. "Unfortunately, despite all the Interior Ministry's efforts, decreasing the problem has been unsuccessful," he said, adding that Russia's economy lost 310 million rubles ($10,750,000) as a result of fire last year.
Stating that St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast have the country's highest number of fires, Serebrenikov said that 28 fire fighters lost their lives as a result last year. In December, 21 people in the Leningrad Oblast town of Primorsk died in a fire that broke out in a single-story wooden hospital where 85 severely mentally retarded patients were sleeping. One of the firemen on the scene said then that the victims were burned beyond recognition. And last July, three people were killed and dozens left homeless when a fire broke out in a five-story building at 108 Nab. Reki Fontanki, eventually causing an explosion. Officials said it was most likely sparked by a short circuit or by a resident who accidentally fell asleep while smoking a cigarette.
Fire department officials said late last year that St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast were facing a fire crisis, with 11,706 fires breaking out in a period of nine months and causing the deaths of 427 people, including 13 children, and injuring 754.