Tajikistan: 13 children die in home fire
A fire swept through a home for disabled children in the Tajik capital today, killing 13 children.
Distraught neighbours said they pulled dozens of others from the burning building in Dushanbe before firefighters arrived.
Two of the home’s 100 or so charges were taken to hospital, one with smoke inhalation and another with a broken leg, said First Deputy Labour and Public Protection Minister Makhmud Kasimov.
At the scene, neighbour Zebunisso Sharipova said the fire department did not arrive until 30 minutes after the early morning fire started, and that she and her relatives and other neighbours rushed into the building and pulled out all the surviving children.
“When firefighters arrived, everything was ablaze,” she said.
Fires are common in ageing schools, orphanages and other state facilities across the former Soviet Union, where safety violations are rife and electric or gas heaters are often used to supplement inadequate heating systems during the cold winter.
The fire completely gutted the single-storey wood-and-brick building, which was built in 1934.
Kasimov said authorities believe the use of electric heaters may have overloaded its electrical system, sparking the fire, which apparently broke out in the attic.
The building housed children with mental and physical disabilities, officials said. Some had nervous system disorders, including cerebral palsy, and were unable to escape from the building without help, officials said.
Sharipova said her family called to report the fire immediately after seeing it and then again about 10 or 15 minutes later to urge firefighters to hurry.
The head of the national firefighting service’s research department, Saidmurot Gaiyurov, said firefighters from a station about half a mile away were on the scene within two minutes of a call from employees of the facility. He said he was unaware of any calls from neighbours.
Gaiyurov said the employees had called too late, apparently hoping they could contain the fire themselves, and that the building was burning fast – a result of its mostly wooden interior construction – when firefighters arrived.
Kasimov said a government commission was set up to investigate the fire, and the ITAR-Tass news agency reported that the impoverished Central Asian nation’s President Emomali Rakhmonov ordered the commission to report to him personally.
The Interfax news agency reported that 60 children were in hospital with burns or smoke inhalation, citing a national fire department official, but Kasimov said that only two of the evacuated children were in the hospital and the rest had been sent to non-emergency facilities. Health Minister Nusratullo Faizullayev also denied the report, ITAR-Tass said.
