RAMENSKY: Thirty-eight people, mostly psychiatric patients, were killed yesterday in a fire that ravaged a hospital in the Moscow region, with the victims engulfed by flames as they slept behind barred windows.
The deadly night-time blaze raised new questions about security standards at Russia’s medical institutions, in particular at psychiatric hospitals, after a string of fires in the last years.
The fire spread rapidly throughout the wood-and-brick hospital wing in the small town of Ramensky, around 100km outside Moscow as the patients slept heavily after reportedly being given sleeping pills.
Officials said the residents of the wing of Hospital No. 14 apparently died in their sleep from smoke inhalation as the fire spread rapidly through the building dating back to 1940, although three managed to escape in the early stages of the inferno.
“As a result of the fire, 38 people died, three escaped — one nurse and two patients,” the health ministry said in a statement.
The emergency situations ministry listed those believed to have died as two female orderlies and 36 patients.
The patients, who may have been sedated, apparently slept through smoke alarms, although the nurse who escaped did wake up and rescued two patients despite heavy smoke. AFP
