Market roof collapse kills 52 in Moscow

THE concave, snow-covered roof of a large Moscow market collapsed early yesterday, killing at least 52 people.

Rescuers were forced to clear away concrete slabs and metal beams to reach possible survivors trapped in the wreckage, officials said.

A fire broke out on the edge of the collapse site mid-afternoon, sending acrid smoke billowing into the air. Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Viktor Beltsov said it erupted when a spark from an electric saw, used to cut through metal, ignited some paint, and that it posed no threat to anyone trapped in the wreckage.

Rescue workers used metal cutters and hydraulic lifters to clear the ruins of steel and concrete. Workers used pickaxes to cut holes in the wreckage and knelt to call into the holes in search of survivors.

Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who went to the site to oversee rescue efforts, said terrorism was unlikely.

“Chances are more than 90% that a terrorist act can be ruled out,” he told reporters. “It was a technical accident.”

Medical workers tried to help a man trapped under a slab of concrete that left only his hand visible, giving him painkillers through an intravenous drip. Rescuers used machines to blow warm air into the rubble to try to keep victims alive in the near freezing temperatures.

Trapped survivors called relatives using mobile phones, helping rescuers find them, said Yuri Akimov, deputy head of the Moscow department of the Emergency Situations Ministry.

The victims were municipal and market workers, most believed to be workers from outside Moscow. Most Moscow markets are staffed by migrants from the former Soviet republics of the Caucasus region and Central Asia.

“There may be people alive under there, but time is passing,” Beltsov said, adding that many panels had fallen on top of one another “so it would be hard for a person to be (alive) in there.”

Emergency officials said it was impossible to say how many people had been in the market at the time of the collapse. Russian news agencies quoted some survivors as saying up to 150 people could have been inside.

Investigators were looking at three possible causes of the collapse: Improper maintenance of the building, a build-up of snow and errors in the building’s design, Moscow prosecutor Anatoly Zuyev said.

Ukhtai Salmanov, a 52-year-old herb-seller from Azerbaijan, said he had been leaving the market at about 4:50am.

“I heard a loud noise and I fell to the ground and lost consciousness. When I came to, I was lying by the entrance.

“There was smoke and people were screaming,” Ukhtai said, his clothes covered in dust.

Fighting back tears, he said his three sisters, who also worked in the market, were killed.

There was no way he could have saved anyone, he said, because a mound of rubble blocked him from reaching them.

A crowd of relatives of market workers stood outside the police tape, crying and shouting. “My brother’s in there. He’s not answering his phone ... We keep calling him,” a man who identified himself only by his first name, Salekh, told AP Television News.

Interfax said that the market had been designed in the 1970s by Nodar Kancheli, the same architect who drafted the plans for Moscow’s Transvaal water park, where the roof collapsed in February 2004, killing 28 people. Prosecutors have blamed that collapse on design flaws.

Kancheli visited the market, one of the capital’s largest, early yesterday.

“I think one possibility is a big build up of snow,” Kancheli told Ekho Moskvy radio. “And they set up kiosks on the mezzanine, which was not originally planned.”

He said that corrosion also could have played a role.

Luzhkov said that the Bauman Market, also known as the Basmany market, was among buildings designed by Kancheli’s firm that had been checked for safety after the Transvaal disaster.