MOSCOW, July 23 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Four people were killed and 10 injured on Saturday after a hot water pipe burst at a shopping mall in western Moscow, officials said.
The city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said some of those injured had suffered burns and that emergency services were working at the scene.
Russian news agencies quoted investigators as saying that there had been no ammonia leak at the site as had been suspected for a time.
Video footage showed flooding throughout the building and steam flowing out of a doorway.
The mall, known as Vremena Goda (the Seasons), opened in 2007 and contains more than 150 stores.
“We are providing medical assistance to all the victims,” Sobyanin said.
Workers at the shopping mall looked stunned as they congregated outside after evacuating. Some were draped in blankets following the terrifying incident.
Russian news agency TASS reports that the Russian Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case over the death of four people.
‘A criminal case has been opened on the grounds of a crime under Part 3 of Article 238 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (negligence in providing services that resulted in two or more deaths),’ Yulia Ivanova, spokeswoman for the Investigative Committee’s Moscow department, said.
Emergency services said that a hot water pipe ruptured on the ground floor of the mall and four bodies were found. Nine more were taken to hospital and one was sent for outpatient treatment.
Tragically, this is not the first occasion where Russians have been killed by hot water pipes bursting.
In Russia, hot water is piped to work and residential buildings for heating especially during the severe winters.
In January 2020 scalding water from a burst pipe flooded a hostel in the Ural region, killing five people including a mother and her five-year-old daughter.
Natalia Shats, 43, from Solikamsk, had been staying in the hostel with her daughter Ekaterina Shats following a check-up after heart surgery at a nearby hospital when they were trapped in the torrent of scalding water. — NNN-AGENCIES
