Since 1923 • For a greater Loyola

The Maroon

Since 1923 • For a greater Loyola

The Maroon

Since 1923 • For a greater Loyola

The Maroon

    Official: Russian nightclub fire toll reaches 117

    Emergency doctors carry a victim of a night club fire to a plane at an airport in Perm, about 700 miles (1,200 kilometers) east of Moscow, Saturday, Dec. 5, 2009. Many of the injured were sent for treatment to Moscows top emergency hospitals. Authorities said more than 100 people died and 134 injured. The fire tore through the popular Lame Horse nightclub in Perm late Friday, after fireworks set a suspended plastic ceiling ablaze, filling the crowded club with thick black smoke.
    (AP Photo/Misha Japaridze)
    Emergency doctors carry a victim of a night club fire to a plane at an airport in Perm, about 700 miles (1,200 kilometers) east of Moscow, Saturday, Dec. 5, 2009. Many of the injured were sent for treatment to Moscow’s top emergency hospitals. Authorities said more than 100 people died and 134 injured. The fire tore through the popular Lame Horse nightclub in Perm late Friday, after fireworks set a suspended plastic ceiling ablaze, filling the crowded club with thick black smoke.

    MOSCOW (AP) — Four people died in Russian hospitals overnight, bringing the death toll from last weekend’s nightclub fire to 117, an emergency official said Tuesday.

    About 30 of the 120 hospitalized remain in critical condition after Saturday morning’s blaze in a nightclub in Perm, sparked by an indoor fireworks display.

    Prosecutors suspect negligence and on Monday charged four people — the club’s co-owner, its manager and entertainment director and the head of a fireworks company whose indoor show sparked the blaze. All are in custody in the Ural Mountains city.

    Oksana Butina, a local Emergencies Ministry spokeswoman, told The Associated Press that the four new deaths all occurred in hospitals in Perm.

    Most of the dead were killed by burns or gas inhalation, officials have said, although some were crushed as the crowd tried to flee through a single exit.

    Video footage from Russian television showed the club’s ceiling covered in a pattern of woven twigs, which were set alight by one of the pyrotechnics. The ceiling behind the twigs reportedly was highly flammable plastic.

    Enforcement of fire-safety standards is infamously poor in Russia and there have been several catastrophic blazes at drug-treatment facilities, nursing homes, apartment buildings and nightclubs in recent years.

    Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

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