More than 200 Odesa residents clashed with police near Odesa City Hall during a protest on Sept. 16 over the authorities’ failure to respond properly to a fire that killed three children in Victoria Camp near Odesa late on Sept. 15.
Odesa Oblast emergency officials reported that the firefighters on Sept.17 found the body of a third child – 12-year-old Snizhana, who died in a fire that occurred in a two-story wooden building of the children’s camp Victoria in Kyiv District of Odesa late on Sept. 15.
“At least three children of 11 and 15 years of age were injured and taken to the hospital on Sept. 15 and Sept. 16 with injuries and combustion gas poisoning. On Sept. 16 emergency officers also found bodies of two children on a fire scene,” the State Emergency Service of Ukraine reported on its website on Sept. 17.
Child’s Ombudsman Mykola Kuleba wrote on his Facebook, that all three victims were girls of 8, 9 and 12 years of age, the members of the dance ensemble Adele.
“All of them were meant to return home on Sept. 16, as their time in the camp ended. One of the girls called her mother a couple of hours before the fire and asked her to take her out of the camp earlier, as she missed her cat a lot,” Kuleba wrote.
Corruption kills
Kuleba wrote that according to preliminary findings of the investigators the fire safety rules violation was the reason of a dreadful fire.
“More than Hr 11 million was spent on fire safety equipment and water supplies during the state-owned camp reconstruction in 2016. There was a fire hydrant and a storage reservoir in the camp. But there was no water in it!” Kuleba wrote.
The fire alarm was also broken, several media reported.
“Also, why people send the children to the camp four days after the school year starst? Is that a tradition or a necessity to disburse the budget money? Where is the logic? I demand explanations from the city council and the investigation,” wrote the ombudsman.
And he wasn’t alone in his demand.
In the evening on Sept. 16 parents of the children from the Victoria camp and activists came under Odesa City Hall demanding Odesa Mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov to resign.
However, when their demand wasn’t satisfied, the activists tried to break in the city hall. Police used gas against them and they didn’t allow them to settle the tents near the city hall, Radio Svoboda news website reported late on Sept.16.
“The police is going to investigate the illegal and aggressive actions of certain activists during the peaceful protest near the city hall,” the Odesa Oblast police department press service reported on Facebook on Sept.16.
Find the guilty
On Sept.17 Trukhanov met with the parents of the injured and killed children in the main hall of the children’s art center Promin. The police didn’t let the activists come in, dumskaya.net local news website reported on Sept.17.
During the meeting, Trukhanov said he was deeply offended ‘as a father and a grandfather’ by the allegations in corrupt practices.
“We constructed the best camp. The investigators will tell us why there were fire safety violations in it. It was all fine when we put it in commission (in 2016),” Trukhanov said.
The mayor also added he wasn’t informed about fire safety violations in the camp and would do everything he could to find and punish the ones, who are responsible for the tragedy.
“We won’t hide or shift the blame. We also bear responsibility,” Trukhanov said. The mayor put the blame on Petros Sarkisyan, the Victoria Camp director, as the main one who will be brought to the justice.
Kuleba also wrote that on Sept.16 Sarkisyan was taken to the hospital with a heart attack. However, later Dmitriy Golovin, the head of the National Police department in Odesa Oblast told the journalists Sarkisyan was arrested on accusations of criminal negligence that led to deaths and financial and physical damage.
Nashi Groshi investigative news website reported that not only Sarkisyan was to blame for the tragedy.
According to Nashi Groshi, the company Yug-Ukrstroy, that in June 2015 won the Hr 22 million reconstruction works for Victoria Camp tender, as well as Hr 11 million “additional financing for fire safety” in 2016, is under the investigation for allegedly filing the false information in the tender documents.
The documents, that were signed and approved by Borys Panov, the head of the Odesa city council department of the major construction work.
Relatives of children killed and injured at an activity camp clash with police as they storm the city hall in the resort city of Odesa demanding that the city’s mayor resign on Sept. 16, 2017. (AFP)
