A fire at a psychiatric care home in Russia’s Voronezh region killed 23 people, the region’s Emergencies Ministry said December 13. Those who were evacuated were placed in a nearby home for elderly and disabled people.
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Hospital workers told state-run media there were 140 people in the building, including 50 who were bedridden.
“Investigators will look into every possible version of how the fire started and led to such tragic consequences”, Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement, saying it considered the incident a crime.
Seventy patients and four nurses were in the Soviet-era ward when the fire started.
“The mass death of socially vulnerable people occurs each time for the same reason: a lack of funding, dilapidated buildings and too few personnel, especially on night duty”, said Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the federal investigative agency.
Experts were looking into what triggered the latest blaze, investigators said.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered officials to provide support to the families of the victims, while Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov went to the scene to oversee the response to the tragedy.
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Activist Konstantin Rubakhin, whose father was born in Alfyorovka, said that the psychiatric hospital was a awful place. In 2013, a fire killed 37 people in a psychiatric hospital in a provincial village north of Moscow, the second deadly blaze at such a facility that year alone.
