38 killed in psychiatric hospital fire near Moscow

Get short URL Published time: April 26, 2013 00:50 Edited time: April 26, 2013 03:54 At least 38 people have been killed after a fire erupted in a psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Moscow that housed as many as 41 people, including medical staff. The fire started around 2:30 am Moscow Time (22:30 GMT) in Psychiatric hospital 14 in Ramenskoe. By the time fire rescue arrived, the entire one-story building was engulfed in flames. The fire started in a wing housing special treatment patients. One nurse managed to escape the blaze, bringing two patients out of the building to safety where they were found by firefighters. The nurse told reporters that she was woken up by the fire alarm, and ran into the hallway where she noticed a chair burning. She remembers seeing a flash, she said. Photo from mchs.gov.ru Firefighters found the bodies of 12 dead, according to ITAR-TASS. Four were found near the exit of the hospital, while eight others were found in the wards. The hospital had bars on its windows, preventing people from escaping. Most of the bodies were found still in their beds.

“The fire started when they were asleep,” a law enforcement source told TASS, adding that people had little chance to escape. “Some of them tried to escape but were poisoned by the products of combustion," he said, using a technical term for smoke. The fire, meanwhile, has now been fully extinguished but the building "burned down almost completely.”

The fire, meanwhile, has now been fully extinguished.

“Some windows had bars, some did not,” doctor-in-chief of the facility, Murat Shahov told lifenews. He said that only two patients in the facility could not walk, the rest suffered severe psychological illnesses. “There were patients with acute psychosis, alcoholics and one drug addict. We also had patients with schizophrenia.”

Authorities point to faulty electric wiring and a short circuit as the possible cause. Forty five police have cordoned off the area and are investigating the cause of the fire. Currently there are 120 people working at the site of the tragedy, including 30 pieces of machinery. According to the Ministry of Health 18 ambulances were on site. The Emergencies Ministry has published a list of 41 patients and medical staff who were inside the facility when the fire started (full list in Russian). The patients ranged in age from 20 to 76. The two medical staff listed as “to be verified” are believed to be dead. Fire inspectors have made two visits to the hospital in 2012. During the first visit, a number of fire safety violations were found that were later fixed in time for the second inspection in August that same year. “Primary inspections discovered routine violations: no lampshades on lamps, exit signs were not everywhere, difficult reach fire water supply. In August 2012, they had a re-inspection - all violations had been corrected," Yuri Deshevih from the Emergency Ministry told RIA. Tragic history of fires in medical facilities Tragic blazes in medical facilities are common in Russia with at least 18 cases registered in the past seven years. One of the most notable was in 2009 in the Russian Republic of Komi, where a blaze in an old people’s home in the region took the lives of 23 people. Only three were saved in the incident. Two years earlier, a fire in the city of Tula, again in a home for elderly care, resulted in 32 victims. Luckily 247 patients, including medical staff were saved. That same year, in 2007, another inferno in a care home claimed the lives 61 of victims. Only 35 people were saved. ==================

"One of the patients who survived the fire told investigators that when he woke up, the blaze had already begun and a couch in a common room was burning. He added that a new patient was recently admitted who suffered from drug addiction and constantly smoked, disregarding safety rules"

=================== Fire kills dozens in Russian psychiatric hospital Fri, Apr 26 11:15 AM EDT 1 of 11 By Alexei Anishchuk RAMENSKY, Russia (Reuters) - Thirty-eight people were killed, most of them in their beds, in a fire that raged through a psychiatric hospital near Moscow on Friday, raising questions about the care of mentally ill patients in Russia. The fire, which broke out at around 2 a.m. (6 p.m. ET on Thursday), swept through a single-storey building at the hospital, a collection of wood and brick huts with bars on some windows that was home to people sent there on grounds of mental illness by Russian courts. By mid morning, a few blackened walls were left standing. The roof had caved in on top of the twisted metal frames of what were once beds. Bodies lay on nearby grass, covered with blankets. Only three people escaped from the fire in the village of Ramensky, 120 km (70 miles) north of Moscow, prompting speculation the patients were heavily sedated or strapped down. Irina Gumennaya, aide to the head of the chief investigative department of the Moscow region, dismissed suggestions they had been restrained as "rubbish" but promised blood tests to check whether there were high levels of sedatives. "The wards ... did not have doors, the patients could have escaped from the building by themselves," she said, adding that she believed the most likely cause of the blaze was patients smoking, or perhaps a short circuit. Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova said none of the patients were strapped down or subjected to "any such measures that would not have allowed them to react quickly," the state-run RIA news agency reported. President Vladimir Putin called for an investigation of the "tragedy", the latest in a long line of disasters at state institutions that are often ill-funded. Russia's safety record is dismal, accounting for a high death toll on roads, railways and in the air as well as at the workplace. Psychiatrists said the fire was not the first and would not be the last of its kind. "(This happened) because of dilapidated buildings in psychiatric hospitals - a third of the buildings since 2000 have been declared unfit, according to health standards," Yuri Savenko, president of the independent psychiatric association of Russia, told Reuters. Furthermore, junior and middle-ranking staff had miserable salaries and "because of that the staff were asleep", he said. Legal standards governing Russian psychiatric patients "are on the whole satisfactory and on par with European standards, but compliance with them is very weak," lawyer Dmitry Agranovsky said. RUSSIA - "THE MADHOUSE" Putin's critics blamed the state for neglecting its most vulnerable people. "Terrible news ... Those patients who burned were there because they were forced to have treatment," said Dmitry Olshansky, former editor of Russian Life, an online journal. "I read all this and I wonder - what does this remind us of? And then I remember - this is our motherland, the madhouse. Flood, fire, bars on windows ... and we cannot deal with it," he said on his Facebook site. Officials said the blaze consumed the building quickly and firefighters had no chance to save any more people - an account that locals disputed, saying fire engines took more than an hour to reach the scene. "Don't trust anyone who says they (firemen) arrived quickly ... My wife woke me up, we went out on the street with our daughter. Flames were rising high," said a man, who was drinking an early-morning beer at a friend's garage nearby. Asked why the building caught fire, Alexander Yefimovich, an elderly man said: "Why? It's just the usual nonsense." More than 12,000 people were killed in fires in 2011 and more than 7,700 in the first nine months of 2012 in Russia, where the per capita death rate from fires is much higher than in Western nations including the United States. (Additional reporting by Ludmila Danilova, Maria Tsvetkova and Steve Gutterman; writing by Elizabeth Piper; editing by Timothy Heritage, Philippa Fletcher and Giles Elgood) ============== Dozens dead in psych ward fire near Moscow, 3 survive Get short URL Published time: April 26, 2013 00:50 Edited time: April 26, 2013 12:08 Emergency response team working on the fire scene at a mental hospital in the village of Ramensky. (RIA Novosti/Andrey Stenin) Share on Tumblr Download video (4.23 MB) Embed Tags Health, Russia, Accident, Yulia Shapovalova, Tom Barton, Marina Kosareva, Medicine At least 36 people have been killed in a fire at a psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Moscow that housed as many as 41 people, including medical staff. A nurse and two patients were the only survivors. Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a criminal investigation into the fire, reporting that 36 people died, including two nurses. However, the Emergency Ministry has said that 38 died in the blaze. Authorities point to faulty electric wiring and a short circuit as the possible cause. But, the investigators are looking into all possible causes of the fire, “including careless use of fire", Investigative Committee representative Irina Gumennaya told the media. The fire started around 2:30 am Moscow Time (22:30 GMT) in Psychiatric Hospital 14 in Ramenskoe in a wing for special treatment patients. By the time fire rescue arrived, the entire one-story building was engulfed in flames. The fire burned an area of about 420 square meters. One nurse managed to escape the blaze, bringing one patient out of the building to safety, while another patient managed to get out on his own. The nurse told reporters that she was woken up by the fire alarm, and ran into the hallway where she saw a couch burning. She remembers seeing a flash. Emergency response team eliminates fire at Mental Hospital No. 14 in the village of Ramensky of the Dmitrovsky District in the Moscow Region (RIA Novosti/Press-service of Russian Emergency Situations Ministry) Authorities have recovered 36 bodies at the scene. "Seven died from carbon monoxide poisoning, while others perished from burns", Gumennaya said. The Emergency Ministry reported that 38 people were found dead. Journalists are still not allowed close to the fire site, as rescuers are wrapping up their work. Experts have begun to identify the dead bodies at a local hospital, the Emergency Ministry reported. Rescuers found eight of the dead bodies by the exit inside the psychiatric hospital, suggesting that they were trying to escape but were prevented by the effects of carbon monoxide, RIA Novosti reported, quoting a source close to the investigation. Firefighters were delayed getting to the scene because of a closed river crossing – the trip took an hour instead of the expected 20 minutes, local media reported. “We got to the scene before the firefighters did and the doors were closed, so we broke them down. When we got inside we saw one person on the floor already dead from the smoke”, one of the first witnesses on the scene told local media. The hospital had bars on its windows, preventing people from escaping. Most of the bodies were found still in their beds. “The fire started when they were asleep,” a law enforcement source told TASS, adding that people had little chance to escape. “Some of them tried to escape but were poisoned by the products of combustion," he said. The fire, meanwhile, has now been fully extinguished but the building "burned down almost completely.” Emergency response team working on the fire scene at a mental hospital in the village of Ramensky. (RIA Novosti/Andrey Stenin) “Some windows had bars, some did not,” doctor-in-chief of the facility, Murat Shakhov told LifeNews tabloid. He said that only two patients in the facility could not walk, the rest suffered severe psychological illnesses. “There were patients with acute psychosis, alcoholics and one drug addict. We also had patients with schizophrenia.” Forty five police have cordoned off the area and are investigating the cause of the fire. Currently there are 120 people working at the site of the tragedy, including 30 pieces of machinery. According to the Ministry of Health 18 ambulances were on site. Emergency response team working on the fire scene at a mental hospital in the village of Ramensky. (RIA Novosti/Andrey Stenin) A half-meter-long tunnel was discovered dug out under the burned hospital, suggesting that one of the patients may have been planning an escape, according to Interfax. Investigators reported that the fire started in the hospital’s common room. "One of the patients who survived the fire told investigators that when he woke up, the blaze had already begun and a couch in a common room was burning. He added that a new patient was recently admitted who suffered from drug addiction and constantly smoked, disregarding safety rules", Gumennaya added. Another eyewitnesses described how firefighters could not extinguish the blaze due to a lack of water: “The first car arrived without water. Then another came – also empty. It was only the third car that had water,” local resident Yefim Volkov told the media. Emergency response team working on the fire scene at a mental hospital in the village of Ramensky. (RIA Novosti/Andrey Stenin) Some sources claimed that the patients were unable to escape the building in time because they were sedated by powerful drugs, Korrespondent.net reported. One of the firefighters at the scene told reporters that the"building itself was all wooden, which made it easier for the fire to spread”. The Emergencies Ministry has published a list of 41 patients and medical staff who were inside the facility when the fire started (full list in Russian). The patients ranged in age from 20 to 76. The two medical staff listed as “to be verified” are believed to be dead. Fire inspectors made two visits to the hospital in 2012. During the first visit, a number of fire safety violations were found that were later fixed in time for the second inspection in August that same year. Relatives of those killed in the fire will be paid 500,000 rubles ($16,000) in compensation, RIA Novosti quoted Moscow regional governor Andrey Vorobyov as saying. Moscow declared April 27 to be a day of mourning for those killed in the psychiatric hospital fire.

Fukushima debris hits Hawaii

Fukushima debris hits Hawaii Get short URL email story to a friendprint version Published: 18 January, 2013, 21:06 TAGS: Ecology, Health, Nuclear, USA, Japan, Security TRENDS: Fukushima nuclear disaster Reuters / Handout Debris set adrift by the 2011 Japanese tsunami has made its way to Hawaii, triggering concerns over the unknown effects of the radiation it may carry from the meltdown of the Fukushima reactor. Debris has washed ashore the islands of Oahu and Kauai and the state’s Department of Health has been asked to test some of the incoming material for radiation levels. Refrigerator parts, oyster buoys, housing insulation, storage bins, soda bottles, toys, fishing nets, plastic trash cans and even Japanese net boats have all washed up on Hawaiian sands in the past few weeks, triggering serious environmental concerns over both water pollution and radiation exposure. Long-term exposure to radiation can cause cancer, gene mutations, premature aging and in severe cases, death. The consequences of the influx of debris are unknown, causing local agencies to advocate precaution in picking up the Japanese debris. After a Kona fisherman discovered a 24-foot Japanese net boat floating along the Hawaiian coast early this month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began an investigation to trace where some of the items have come in from and possibly find its owners. “On behalf of NOAA and the State of Hawaii, we ask that anyone who finds personal items, which may have come from the tsunami, to please report them to county, state and/or federal officials,” William J. Aila, Jr., Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) chairperson, told Hawaii 24/7 News. Depending on an object’s weight, density and other physical characteristics, it can take months or years to travel from Japan to Hawaii, which explains why many of the same type of items are floating ashore at the same time. Although an estimated 70 percent of the tsunami debris sank offshore, millions of tons of wreckage are still adrift and slowly making landfall, reports LiveScience. Aside from the unknown radiation risks, some of the debris is bringing invasive species to Hawaii, thereby threatening the island chain’s ecosystem and introducing the possibility of consuming contaminated seafood. The 24-foot boat found by the fisherman was covered in blue mussels, which are native to Japan and harmful to Hawaii’s marine life – especially the corals. “If it does take hold, the concern is that they will just be able to populate at a fast rate and out compete some of our native species,” Jono Blodgett, the aquatic species program leader at DLNR, told the Honolulu Civil Beat. And even if Hawaiians attempt to kill the invasive mussels, their attempts might be fruitless. “When species are stressed out and about to die, they might release their eggs or sperm,” he said. The fisherman who discovered the abandoned Japanese boat saw the mussels as an opportunity for a tasty meal, raising additional concerns about Hawaiian locals’ exposure to radiation found in seafood. Blodgett believes the boat likely drifted to sea before the Fukushima reactors had a meltdown, making the attached mussels safe to consume – but the possibility of contamination remains, especially if the creatures are found on some of the other debris. Even though Hawaiian officials have minimized panic by assuring residents that radiation risks are low, their investigations and detection programs indicate that the concern is still there. The state of Hawaii purchased a $15,000 portable radiation detection device in September, while the Hawaii Department of Health has conducted quarterly shoreline surveillance since the tsunami hit in 2011. This monitoring has increased since the debris began to wash upon the Hawaiian shoreline. But some of the debris is so small that it becomes quickly buried in the sand on the beach, making it impossible to clean up or even detect. “Many places on the beach, it’s hard to differentiate the sand from the plastics on the surface,” Nicholas Mallos of the Ocean Conservancy group told LiveScience. And as long as the radiation risks are unknown, Hawaii residents should avoid collecting floating refrigerator parts or consuming Japanese mussels they might find on washed up debris.