Kommersant, Russia
July 12 2005
Passazh in Ruins
// Shoppers burned along with it
Arson
Yesterday in Ukhta (Komi Republic), two unknown persons threw Molotov
cocktails at the Passazh shopping center owned by local businessman
Vladimir Gevorkian. Nineteen female customers and two male employees
died in the fire. Another five people are in critical condition.
Investigators are convinced that organized crime groups from among
Slavic convicts serving sentences in Ukhta, who have long dreamed of
forcing Caucasians out of business in the city, are behind the crime.
There has never before been a fire with so many victims resulting
from arson in Russia. Sergey Dyupin has the details.
A Fire of Republican Significance
The fire in the Passazh shopping center located in the old city
center on Oktiabrskaya Street started exactly at 14.00. It developed
swiftly after breaking out on the first floor of the building; a wall
of flame raced through a long, narrow corridor to the only exit,
cutting off the escape route for all shoppers and salespersons
gathered on the first and second floors. Within several seconds, the
fire ascended a staircase to the second floor, penetrated the small
shops located on both sides of the corridors, and spread into the
attic.
`The situation instantly became critical,’ a city fireman involved in
putting out the fire and evacuating the victims told Kommersant.
`This happened because, during construction, subsequent renovations,
and operation of the building, elementary fire safety requirements
were not observed.’
As specialists explained, the store owners were worried about their
own image. They faced the old building dating from the 1950s with
brick, installed double-glazed windows, made European-style
renovations inside, and hung advertisements outside. There was a lot
of emphasis on protecting the goods – all the windows were enclosed
in metal grilles and steel doors equipped with alarms were installed
at both entrances. At the same time, the two interior corridors that
ran along the length of the entire building were so narrow that two
shopping carts could not pass one another. The emergency exit from
the store was locked altogether. On the inside, the building was
finished with combustible synthetic materials; and because there was
no provision for air conditioning in Passazh, in hot weather, all the
windows had to be left open.
`Earlier, there was a sixteen-room wooden barrack for deportees in
this building,’ the fireman explained. `After renovations, this
barrack was turned into respectable, expensive shopping center, but
the building’s safety was still at the barrack level. So when the
fire broke out, Passazh turned into a real crematorium.’
People cut off by the fire rushed out into the narrow smoke-filled
corridors and collapsed after inhaling toxic fumes. The passageway
before the only open exit from Passazh became jammed, so that even
those who had managed to remain conscious were prevented from getting
out. People tried without success to break off the grilles on the
second floor. Someone beat on the locked steel door at the other
emergency exit, but his attempts were also unsuccessful. A store
security guard managed to save about ten people. After miraculously
escaping outside, he immediately drove his jeep to the wall of the
burning building, fastened the winch hook to the grille of a window
near the fire escape, and pulled it out. Fear-maddened people raced
to the opening and clung to the stairs, but only a few of them
managed to get down them. Most simply collapsed.
By the time the first firefighting crews arrived, the whole building,
from the first floor to the roof, was engulfed in flames. All the
firefighters could do was surround the building and flood it with
water. After about two hours, the fire was extinguished, but then the
burnt-out floors and roof collapsed under the weight of the water.
However, at that point, there was no one left alive in Passazh.
It was only towards late evening, after investigators had sifted
through the wreckage, that the first summaries of the disaster
appeared. Twenty-one people, almost all of them women, died in the
fire, and almost as many were in hospitals suffering from burns,
carbon monoxide poisoning, and injuries received from jumping from
the second floor. Doctors said that five of the injured were in grave
condition, so the number of victims could increase.
Given the scale of the tragedy, the local authorities have decided to
pay for the burial of all the dead, and declare the day of the
funerals a day of mourning in the Komi Republic. However, no date has
been set; many of bodies were badly burned, so it will take some time
to identify them.
Ex-convicts Suspected
As is usual in these cases, several theories as to the cause of the
fire were considered at the very start of the investigation.
According to one of them, the fire started due to the spontaneous
explosion of a gas cylinder. It is known that several days before the
fire, there had been minor repair work done at Passazh using gas
welding and the builders had left a full 40-l propane cylinder under
a first-floor staircase. Since the fire broke out in that exact
place, the gas cylinder theory advanced by the Ministry of Emergency
Situations was the leading one in the first few hours, but it soon
had to be abandoned.
As the specialists said, the gas cylinder explosion was an effect,
but not a cause, of the fire. The fire was caused by arson. Witnesses
told investigators from the prosecutor’s office that they had seen
two young men, possibly even teenagers, rushing from the building a
second after it burst into flame and taking to their heels. All
doubts faded after fire engineers had done some work at the site.
`The specialists’ conclusions are still not final,’ Ukhta’s
prosecutor, Nikolai Sanaev, told Kommersant. `But they have
tentatively established that the fire started on the first floor
under the up staircase, that is, about in the middle of the corridor.
The ignition source was some kind of volatile liquid – traces of it
were discovered in the ashes – but further examinations will be
needed to determine the exact composition and quantity of this
liquid.’
The arsonists have so far not been arrested; therefore, it is still
premature to speak of their motives. However, local investigators are
convinced that the teenagers were recruited for the crime by a local
organized crime group of ex-convicts, or `blues’, the name given here
to the heavily tattooed [hence the name `blues’] professional
criminals who have served their sentences in the Komi Republic and
have stayed on after doing their time. There are a lot of these
people in the North, but the blues don’t always occupy a niche worthy
of their `authority’ in local business – Caucasians get in the way.
Ukhta is becoming more and more like other big cities,’ an officer
with the local criminal investigation department told Kommersant.
`Azerbaijanis here run the produce business – both wholesale and
retail – Armenians deal in manufactured goods, and Dagestanis run the
transport business. There’s nothing left for our local convicts to do
but pick pockets the old fashioned way, so they’re against anyone who
tramples on their business. This is what causes all the problems.’
However, not everyone in Ukhta agrees with this. `Local businessman
Vladimir Gevorkian and his son Georgy own Passazh, along with their
partners, Vladimir Gusev and Aleksey Vladimirov,’ Viktor Zhuravelev,
the head of the city administration’s department of consumer markets
and trade, told Kommersant. `They recently leased the shopping center
to OOO Severtorg, which sublet the space to small businesses. All of
these deals are absolutely legal, and all of those involved in them
are respectable people and serious, diversified businessmen, not
criminals. There have never been any criminal or interethnic
confrontations in city business. Therefore, I’m convinced it wasn’t
arson; the blaze was caused accidentally by careless use of fire.’
When the Kommersant correspondent asked Zhuravelev to put him in
touch with the owners of Passazh, he said it was impossible, because
Gevorkian was out of the republic and his partners were being
questioned at the prosecutor’s office.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress