RUSSIA: 37 REPORTED DEAD AFTER FIRE IN A HOSPITAL

37 Reported Dead After Fire in a Russian Hospital

Olga Maltseva/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Emergency responders carried the remains of a victim from the debris of a hospital on Friday.

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

Published: September 13, 2013

MOSCOW — A fire early on Friday in a psychiatric hospital in northwestern Russia killed 37 people, including a nurse who was trying to save patients, local investigators said.

Reuters

The remains of a psychiatric hospital after a fire early Friday.

The raging blaze that began at about 2:30 a.m. destroyed the 19th-century, one-story wooden hospital in the town of Luka-Oksochi, about 350 miles northwest of Moscow in the Novgorod region, officials said.

At least 20 people were rescued from the burning building, and by Friday afternoon the authorities said they had recovered 10 bodies.

Local news agencies reported that the building may not have met current safety standards and that it had been scheduled to close, with patients to be transferred to other institutions by the end of the year.

The fire apparently started in the bed of a patient, officials said. But the director of the hospital, Hussein Magomedov, told the Interfax news agency that the fire appeared to have been deliberately set.

Photos from the scene initially showed a fierce orange blaze and heavy, billowing smoke and later the charred ruins of the building. The Russian Emergency Affairs Ministry said more than 400 firefighters and other personnel were brought in to fight the blaze.

In April, 38 people were killed in a fire in a psychiatric hospital just north of Moscow. Fires in state-run institutions, often in poorly maintained buildings, have been a persistent problem in Russia.

A version of this article appears in print on September 14, 2013, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Blaze Destroys a Russian Hospital.