Nine die in psychiatric clinic blaze

Nine patients of a clinic for the mentally ill in Siberia died in a fire today, a day after a blaze at a Moscow drug treatment centre killed 45, officials said.

The accidents underlined widespread neglect for fire safety rules in Russia, which records about 18,000 fire deaths a year – roughly 10 times the rate in the United States.

The blaze in the psychiatric hospital in the town of Taiga in the Kemerovo region in central Siberia, about 3,500 kilometres (2,200 miles) east of Moscow, broke out shortly after midnight local time (5pm Irish Time Saturday).

Nine patients of the clinic died and 15 were taken to hospital, said Valery Korchagin, a spokesman for the regional branch of Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry.

Mr Korchagin said hospital officials tried to extinguish the blaze on their own and were slow to report it to officials.

“They only reported it one and a half hours after the fire started,” he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

In the fire in Moscow early yesterday, 45 women at a drug treatment centre died when they were trapped behind locked gates and barred windows.