- TIME: 23:15 Local Time (11:15 PM) (18:15 GMT)
- LOCATION: #9 Kuybysheva Street; Perm, Russia
Long: 56º E 13' 55" / Lat: 58º N 00' 49"
- The Club was celebrating its 8th anniversary
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- Horrific scenes of the blaze that swept through a Russian nightclub, killing 109 people, were caught on amateur video.
- The footage shows celebrations
turning to panic as the fire quickly spread through the Lame Horse club
in Perm late on Friday night.
- Initially, the club-goers exchanged
nervous glances as wisps of smoke began to appear, but the scene turned
to horror as flames raced across the ceiling, which had been decorated
with twigs.
- Officials said 109 people died in the fire.
- Authorities said they arrested the registered owner of the club and the manager. Officials
said the club managers ignored repeated demands from authorities to
change the club's interior to comply with fire safety standards. "They have neither brains, nor conscience", Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said, urging a tough punishment for the culprits.
Officials said most of the dead suffocated or were crushed at the exit.
- 'The
fire spread very quickly,' said Marina Zabbarova, chief investigator
for the local prosecutor's office. 'Panic arose which led to a mass
death of people.' News
footage shot later outside the Lame Horse showed charred bodies lying
in rows on the ground amid a light snowfall. Rescue workers carried
bodies on stretchers into waiting vans.
- Svetlana
Kuvshinova, who was in the nightclub when the blaze broke out, told the
AP it started after three fireworks fountains spewed sparks, igniting
the plastic ceiling. 'The fire took seconds to spread,' she said. 'It was like a dry haystack. There was only one way out. They nearly stampeded me.'
- Another clubgoer said panic spread quickly through the crowd.'There
was only one exit, and people starting breaking down the doors to get
out,' said a woman who identified herself only as Olga, smeared with
soot and wearing a filthy fur coat. 'They were breaking the door and panic set in. Everything was in smoke. I couldn't see anything.'
Two injured men standing in front of the Lame Horse nightclub in the centre of Perm, a city 720 miles east of Moscow
Rescuers walk near bodies on stretchers gathered outside the club. Most people died from smoke inhalation
Rescuers stand by the bodies of the fire victims
Anxious relatives read lists with names of injured in a nightclub fire at a hospital in Perm
- A video recorded by one of the
clubgoers and run by Russian television stations showed flames
engulfing the ceiling decorated with willow twigs as a host shouted in
a casual tone: 'Ladies and Gentlemen, guests of the club, we are on
fire. Please leave the hall!' People
reluctantly and slowly began heading toward the exit, some of them
turning back to look at the burning ceiling, but then rushed away in
panic as flames quickly spread around seconds later.
Many of the victims were crushed to death in the scramble for the exit (left); The aftermath (right)
- Some 200 relatives of the victims waited in anguish outside a morgue on the
outskirts of the city for the slow work of identifying the bodies. A regional
emergency situations ministry spokeswoman said 57 people had been
identified. She said a further 130 people were injured in the blaze
overnight from Friday to Saturday, and local residents said hospitals had put
out an urgent call for blood donors in the wake of the tragedy.
- Firefighters
were on the scene in downtown Perm one minute after the alarm was
called in, the Emergency Situations Ministry said, and they took less
than an hour to put the fire out.
Investigators and relatives of the victims
gather outside the club. A top investigator said that there was no
suspicion of a terrorist attack
Relatives of a victim of a fire embrace after taking part in a corpse identification procedure at a local morgue in Perm
- Zabbarova, the top investigator, said that there was no suspicion of a terrorist attack.
- Russia
has been on edge since last week's bombing of the high-speed Nevsky
Express passenger train midway between Moscow and St. Petersburg, which
killed 27 in the first deadly terrorist attack outside Russia's restive
Caucasus republics since 2004. Chechen rebels claimed responsibility
for the blast.
- Perm, a city of around 1 million people, is about 700 miles (1,200 kilometers) east of Moscow in the Ural Mountains.
- Enforcement
of fire safety standards is notoriously lax in Russia and there have
been several catastrophic blazes at drug-treatment facilities, nursing
homes, apartment buildings and night clubs in recent years.
Emergency doctors carry a victim of a night
club fire to a plane at an airport in Perm. Many of the injured were
sent for treatment to Moscow's top emergency hospitals
A heavily wounded victim of the fire in the night club Lame Horse in Perm is brought to the Sklifasovsky hospital in Moscow
Medical workers help the victims of a fire in
Perm on board a flying hospital on the way to Moscow. President Dmitry
Medvedev has demanded tough punishment for the owners of a Russian
nightclub
- Emergency Services officials in a
televised meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev said managers at the
venue had violated fire safety laws and repeatedly ignored orders to
comply with standards.
- 'Warnings
were issued, but they didn't react,' Medvedev said, urging swift
punishment for those responsible. 'They have neither brains, nor
conscience!'
- Premier
Vladimir Putin ordered a government commission to probe the causes of
the tragedy, saying in a statement: 'It is necessary to launch a minute
investigation, punish the culprits and discovered the causes of this
monstrous disaster.'
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