45 people killed in fire in Moscow drug hospital

Moscow, Dec 9 (UNI) At least 45 people were killed early today in a fire at a drug rehabilitation hospital in the south-western part of Moscow.

Russian Deputy Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Chupriyan told reporters here that ten others were injured.

Around 214 people were rescued from the building, 50 of them were rushed to a nearby hospital, Russian news agencies reported.

Mr Chupriyuan said the victims, all of them women, found themselves trapped in the five-storey building, with the escape routes blocked with metal grilles, and they died as a result of inhaling fumes before firefighters arrived at the scene.

''They could not leave the premises without outside help, as only one emergency exit was open,'' he said.

The ministry earlier reported that the fire at the hospital started at 0140 hrs (local time). The second floor of the five-storey building housing hospital's female department, was the worst affected. The blaze was put out by 0239 hrs (local time).

''Rescue teams are finishing their work, and an investigation is continuing,'' Mr Chupriyan said.

He also stressed that the hospital's personnel had reacted inadequately to the emergency. When the fire alarm system went off, the personnel left the building but did not care about evacuating the patients, he said.

The ministry said it had asked a court earlier this year to close down the hospital over fire safety violations, but the court rejected the request.

The prosecutors have launched a criminal case on charges of violation of fire safety rules.

Reuters adds: Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova told Reuters, ''One staircase was blocked by the fire and the other was blocked by a metal grille that firefighters had to remove.'' A reporter who was allowed within 100 metres (yards) of the building saw grilles on the windows of lower floors. Some of the windows were smashed but there was otherwise little evidence of fire damage.

As the alarm was raised fire crews arrived in under 10 minutes and took only 20 minutes to extinguish the fire, officials said.

''It was a very particular building with five storeys and only one exit and bars on the windows because it was a drug treatment hospital,'' said Andrianova.

''We believe that people just did not raise the alarm in time because it was thick smoke and it only takes three breaths of that and people fall unconscious,'' she said.

Russia has seen several fatal fires at secure hospitals where drug addicts or mentally ill people are treated. They are often in old, neglected buildings where patients are held in secure conditions.

In December last year seven people died when a fire broke out in the night at a hospital near Moscow treating people for nervous disorders.

In March 2005 seven people were killed in a fire at a drug treatment centre in Samara, in the Volga River region of central Russia, Itar-Tass news agency reported.

Nineteen people died in 1999 in a fire at a hospital for people with mental illnesses in the Leningrad region near Russia's second city of St Petersburg, the agency said.

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