Russian nightclub after blast
Photo: Reuters
Reports: Russian nightclub blast kills 102
Emergencies ministry says deaths due to 'cold fireworks', most die from gas inhalation or burns
An explosion and fire that officials blamed on pyrotechnics tore through a popular nightclub in the Russian city of Perm early Saturday, killing 102 people, the Russian emergencies ministry said.
Regional security minister Igor Orlov said the club had a suspended plastic ceiling that caught fire quickly when ignited by so-called "cold fireworks," generally fountain-type displays with lower temperatures than conventional fireworks, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
"The majority of the deaths were the result of burns or gas inhalation," state news agency RIA Novosti quoted Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for Russia's top investigate body, as saying "Along with this, there was a crush at the exit."
State television showed charred bodies lying in rows on the ground outside the club amid a light snowfall. Rescue workers carried bodies on stretchers into waiting vans.
Witnesses told the Itar-TASS agency that smoke billowed out of the building soon after the blaze erupted. Firefighters were on the scene almost immediately, they said.
Markin said that there was no suspicion of a terrorist attack. RIA Novosti said the local branch of Russia's Federal Security Service had sifted through the site but found no evidence of a bomb.
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 people. It was the first fatal terrorist attack outside Russia's restive Caucasus republics since 2004.
Chechen rebels claimed responsibility for the blast.
The Emergencies ministry reported 102 deaths, though some media reported that up to 112 had been killed.
RIA Novosti quoted a spokesman for Russia's health and social development ministry saying that 134 people were hospitalized following the blast and fire, 79 of them in serious condition.
At least 200 patrons were reportedly in the one-story nightclub when the fire began, most of them young people. The grim job of identifying the bodies was scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. Saturday, RIA Novosti said.
Perm, a city of around 1 million people, is about 1,200 kilometers east of Moscow in the Ural Mountains.
Enforcement of fire safety standards in Russia is notoriously lax and there have been several catastrophic blazes at drug-treatment facilities, nursing homes and apartment buildings in recent years.
Russia records nearly 18,000 fire deaths a year, several times the per capita rate in the United States and other Western countries. Nightclub fires have killed thousands of people worldwide.
Ten people died when a so-called "fire show" went an entertainer's clothing ignited at a Moscow club in March 2007.
In February 2008, a fire in the Golden Rock nightclub in the Siberian city of Omsk killed four people. Officials said the blast might have been caused by natural gas.
A nightclub fire in the US state of Rhode Island in 2003 killed 100 people after pyrotechnics used as a stage prop by the 1980s rock band Great White set ablaze cheap soundproofing foam on the walls and ceiling.
