Russia’s Investigative Committee continues investigating a criminal case over violation of fire safety requirements (part 3 of article 219 of the RF Criminal Code) opened over death of 38 people during a fire in psychiatric hospital No14 in the village of Ramenskiy, Dmitrovsky district, Moscow Region.
At the same time three more criminal cases were launched into negligence (part 3 of article 293): against chief of 5th team of Moscow Region fire service Alexey Yefimov, head of the rural settlement of Kulikovskoye, Dmitrovsky municipal district of Moscow Region Nikolai Yelesin and into negligent actions of personnel in the psychiatric hospital.
It has been found that the blaze in the wooden building of the hospital started at about 2 at night. The first fire engines arrived more than an hour later. The fire station covering Kulikovskoye rural settlement and the village of Ramenskiy is situation 50 km away. Under the acting legislation location of fire departments is determined based on the assumption that the arrival time of the first fire crew in rural settlements should not exceed 20 minutes. Thereby, Yefimov did not take into account the remoteness of Ramenskiy when assigning coverage areas for the Dmitrovsky fire units. No measures have ever been taken to build a closer fire station.
Yelesin, as the head of municipality, should have taken measures to timely contain the fire, save people and property before the State Fire Service arrived. However, nothing of this was done.
In their turn officials of the psychiatric hospital knew that the socially important care facility holding patients with limited psychophysical abilities 24/7 was located at the distance which did not allow fire brigades to come on time to put out the fire. Investigators believe that the personnel of the hospital did not timely used fire-extinguishing means the building had.
All this in the aggregate led to a tragedy killing a lot of people and material damage. Investigation is ongoing.
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