Fire kills 23 at Russian home for the mentally ill; cause unknown

A fire swept through a Russian home for people with mental illnesses, killing 23 patients and injuring another 23, the emergency services said Sunday.

The remaining 24 patients were safely evacuated to other facilities, and the four medical personnel working at the home were unhurt, they said.

Investigators have not yet determined the cause of the fire, which broke out late Saturday in Alferovka, a village in the Voronezh region about 350 miles south of Moscow. The fire in the one-story brick building was extinguished shortly after 3 a.m. (0000 GMT) Sunday.

The fire started in a section of the home dedicated to patients who were unable to walk, emergency services official Igor Kobzev said on Russian state television. He said 39 of the patients in the home could not walk and those who were saved were carried out of the building.

All of the patients at the Novokhopersky Neuropsychiatric Home were men and those who died were aged between 46 and 78, according to a list released by the emergency services.

Those who were evacuated were placed in a nearby home for elderly and disabled people.

Russia has a poor fire safety record with about 12,000 fire deaths reported in 2012. By comparison, the U.S., with a population roughly double Russia’s, recorded around 3,000 fire deaths in 2011.

In April 2013, a small psychiatric hospital in a town outside of Moscow burned down, killing 38 people; only two patients and one nurse survived. The health minister said half of the patients were given sedatives at night, but insisted they were not tied to their beds and were not given any medication that would leave them unconscious and unable to escape. Much of the blame was placed on firefighters, who took an hour to arrive.

In September 2013, a fire at a home for psychiatric patients in the Novgorod region northwest of Moscow killed 37 people. Investigators said the fire was caused inadvertently by a patient who was smoking, but the chief doctor insisted the fire was deliberately set.

A 2006 fire at a drug treatment facility in Moscow with barred windows and locked doors killed 45.