Four people were held in jail last night pending an investigation into a nightclub fire that killed at least 112 people in Russia’s worst blaze in decades, investigators said.
About 130 remained in hospital, many in critical condition, with injuries from the blaze, which witnesses said was sparked by on- stage fireworks that shot into the decorative twig ceiling of the Lame Horse club in the Ural Mountains industrial city of Perm in the early hours of Saturday morning.
Shocked and grieving relatives yesterday began to bury the victims of the disaster.
The federal investigative committee said the suspects – the club’s owner, the executive director, the artistic director and a businessman hired to install pyrotechnics on the night of the blaze – were ordered to be taken into custody by Leninsky district court.
The committee’s website said they were suspected of negligence causing multiple deaths and violating fire safety rules causing multiple deaths.
Russian news agencies named the owner as Anatoly Zak. The pyrotechnics expert was named as Sergei Dergunov by his lawyer, Yekaterina Golysheva.
Mourning residents were indignant over the alleged negligence, which Russian president Dmitry Medvedev also criticised in a nationally televised video conference on Saturday.
Emergency situations minister Sergei Shoigu said the club managers had been fined twice in the past for breaking fire safety regulations, which he did not specify.
Russian clubs and restaurants often cover ceilings with plastic insulation and a layer of willow twigs to create a rustic look, one of many uses of combustible materials in buildings by businessmen who bribe officials to look a way.
Nadezhda Zhizhina placed flowers on the icy ground outside the Perm city morgue in memory of her son, Sergei (21).
She said she was not expecting the compensation officials have promised to other victims’ relatives because Sergei earned pocket money at the club as an unofficial administrator.
“I can’t even imagine what to do,” Ms Zhizhina said, weeping. “He was a golden boy.”
She said Sergei’s wife, Yulia, was eight months’ pregnant.
The disaster has shaken this city of more than one million, mobilising even those who did not lose relatives – such as Marina Dryonina. “This is nothing but criminal negligence,” she said. “A terrible tragedy for our town.”
Many victims were trapped in a panicked crush for the exit as they attempted to escape the flames and thick black smoke.
Emergency ministry spokeswoman Darya Kochneva said a man flown to a Moscow hospital had died of severe burns, bringing the toll to at least 112.
Enforcement of fire safety standards is infamously poor in Russia and there have been several catastrophic blazes at drug-treatment facilities, nursing homes, apartment buildings and nightclubs in recent years.