‘Damn it! Let's start over.’ Kemerovo starts burying the victims of a deadly fire

Three days after a fire tore through a shopping center in Kemerovo, killing 64 people, the city started burying its dead. Many of the victims still haven’t been identified, and emergency management officials told relatives waiting for more information that the remains of 37 people have been shipped to Moscow for forensic examinations that could take another three weeks. Meduza correspondent Irina Kravtsova met with people who lost loved ones in the fire, attended a funeral for one of the victims, and visited the hospital to speak to some of the survivors.

“Putinites” and “fake reports”

At a demonstration on March 27, Igor Vostrikov, who lost his whole family in the fire, suggested setting up an email address to which Kemerovo residents could send information about loved ones who had died. Many people at the rally didn't believe that the fire’s real death toll matches the figure announced by the authorities. One of the people responsible for verifying the information sent to this email address is Maxim Uchvatov, an activist with the local branch of the All-Russia People's Front. On March 28, he told Meduza that he had discovered “fake reports” among the emails sent to the address: “For instance, a report came in that two granddaughters are missing, and the email gave the grandmother's number. We called the number, and some guy picked up and said he knows nothing about any granddaughters. The report was obviously fake.”

According to the activist, staff at Interior Ministry and City Hall will also verify the information collected using the email address. “If relatives report that somebody is missing, we'll go to their home and try to learn all about them. Maybe somebody will send their relative off to Novokuznetsk or somewhere for a year. The relative will be declared missing, and the family will receive compensation for the missing person. You can have a very comfortable life in Altai on 5 million rubles [$87,200],” Uchvatov said. (Relatives of those killed in the fire will receive 1 million rubles from the local authorities, 1 million rubles from the federal government, and 3 million from the co-owners of the “Winter Cherry” shopping mall). Uchvatov refused to tell Meduza how many people were on the list compiled using the information sent to the email address.

There is a lot of talk in Kemerovo about possible “provocations” connected in one way or another to the fire and its victims. Igor Vostrikov, for instance, says he suspects that there were “Putinites” among the civic group members who went from the rally to the morgue to verify the number of bodies and who confirmed that the number matches that given by the authorities. “[At the rally], I chose only the people who were the most vocal about asking to go [to the morgue]. I only knew one of these people personally — I'd never set eyes on the others before. I realized they were Putinites because, even knowing the president would be at the morgue, my ‘action group’ wasn't even searched at the entrance to the building,” he explained. (Meduza's correspondent witnessed the formation of this group at the rally. It was improvised on the spot, and likely wasn’t preplanned.)

Vostrikov said he objected to accusations about the demonstrators by certain officials (for instance, Lieutenant Governor Chernov said the rally was “a preplanned action aimed at discrediting the authorities,” and his boss, Governor Aman Tuleyev, accused “certain forces” of attempting to "destabilize the situation" in the region). Vostrikov also pointed out that many victims’ relatives didn’t attend the rally outside the administrative building because they preferred to remain behind at the group’s headquarters, to collect more information about unidentified victims.

Vostrikov said “ringers” appeared at the demonstration and “started grabbing the microphone and shouting abuse at officials.” Some demonstrators, he said, were trying to resolve their own “urgent issues,” like housing problems. “But there's one thing I can say for certain,” Vostrikov told Meduza. “At the rally, there were no oppositionists or, say, Navalny supporters who had come along to uphold their political ideas.”

On March 29, after meeting with Governor Tuleyev, Vostrikov suddenly abandoned his rhetoric about “Putinites” and started blaming “Maidanites” for radicalizing his March 27 demonstration.

Our kids will be flown to Moscow

Early in the morning on March 28, the surviving parents of the children killed in the fire met at a local high school, where they expected to find out if the bodies had been identified and when they would be returned for burial. Instead, they learned around 11 a.m. that the remains of 37 victims would be flown to Moscow for additional forensic examinations that would take another three weeks.

When one mother heard this news, she begged officials to return her children, so she could lay them to rest sooner. Two lieutenant governors (both of whom a day earlier had spoken to demonstrators outside Kemerovo’s administrative building) told them that they would have ordered the forensic experts to work around the clock, but the investigation was now in Moscow’s hands, and they no longer had any say in the matter.

Alena Zipunova, who lost her 11-year-old daughter, Vika, listened to the news in silence. Then she walked out of the school gymnasium, said aloud, “Our kids will be flown to Moscow,” and broke down in tears.

In the meantime, a man on crutches showed up looking for answers. He asked the police to take him to the investigator who could bring him to speed up the identification of his granddaughter. “My son took his daughter to ‘Winter Cherry’ and they both died there. So they should be buried together,” the man explained. “Our son's body is lying at home and ready for burial. The funeral is scheduled for today, and they promised to identify our granddaughter's remains today and hand them over, but they're not doing it. What am I going to do? I don't want to bury father and daughter separately!”

When the meeting was over, archpriest Gennady Knyazev, head of the Kemerovo diocese social service and charity department, began reading a prayer in the gym for the health — yes, the health — of those who had not yet been identified. A few women joined him, kneeling in silence. Later, when a man asked if a funeral service could be held at church for his daughter before her remains were identified, the priest explained that it's better to pray for health, pending definitive results. “Even if the person is already dead, it will do no harm,” the priest said. Every hour, there were prayers like this one at the gym. Every 30 minutes, there were services near the Kemerovo memorial for the victims who have been identified.

Knyazev says he and other priests have been spending almost all their time at the school gymnasium since the night of the fire. “Right until Monday morning,” he says, “people hoped their children would be saved — even after they had been in the fire all night.” “People were saying to me, ‘I want them to be saved. Please help,’” Knyazev recalls. A little later, they began to ask questions. “Parents who had lost children would come up and ask why this had happened and why it had happened to their children, and some were asking what they had done that was so terrible that God had taken their children.” The priest says he told them: “The Lord doesn't necessarily punish people for their sins. He has His own plan, and, for Him, all the children that people think are dead are alive.” “One priest said to me yesterday: ‘God be praised! Now we will have our own little angels to appeal to God [on our behalf],’” the archpriest added.

Knyazev admits, however, that the tragedy has been hard even for the priests. “Yesterday, our local father, a veteran of Chernobyl, couldn't take it anymore. He started experiencing heart problems,” the archpriest says. “And all the priests here are on medications. I take all my medication in the morning and come here to the headquarters.”

“The life of the recently departed has not ended”

Tatyana Darsaliya, a 37-year-old woman who taught English and German, was the first person who died in the fire to be buried. Her funeral was on March 28. On the day of the tragedy, she took her 14-year-old daughter to the “Winter Cherry” to celebrate the beginning of spring break. The two were on the second floor when the fire started. Tatyana got her daughter to safety, but ran back into the shopping mall when she learned that children were trapped in a movie theater on the fourth floor. She died from carbon monoxide inhalation.

At noon on Wednesday, March 28, Tatyana’s relatives and dozens of her students gathered near the Znamensky Cathedral for her funeral. A student named Kirill brought red carnations. Tatyana had been his teacher since he started grade school. He said her sacrifice didn’t surprise him. “Ms. Darsaliya was very considerate, even with little things. She always tried to understand and help us,” Kirill said, wiping away his tears. “She was a demanding teacher, and she wanted us to get a real knowledge of the language, but at the same time she liked joking in class and was always smiling.”

Marina finished grade school four years ago, but Tatyana Darsaliya was her class teacher from fifth grade to eleventh grade. “She was very fond of children,” Marina said. “Teachers are obliged to take children to the theater or on trips and they go because they're ordered to, but Ms. Darsaliya really loved going on picnics and trips with us. We were always going somewhere with her, and she would film everything. Afterwards, she would always carefully edit the videos and proudly bring the movies to school to show us. She kept these tapes for years.”

Tatyana Darsaliya had many acquaintances: People who didn't know her personally had to stand in the street during the ceremony — there was simply no room in the church. A photograph in a wooden frame showed a beautiful woman smiling broadly and wearing a blue dress; Tatyana wore a similar blue dress in her casket. The priest leading the funeral ceremony told the congregation that “the life of the newly departed has not ended but has changed qualitatively.” He said she had accomplished “the heroic deed that the Lord expects of us all.”

At the end of the service, the priest warned that many people are “exploiting” the tragedy and “provoking” the victims, and called on the congregation not to have dealings with such people, but rather to pray for the souls of their late relatives.

Darsaliya was buried at Kemerovo's Southern Cemetery. Funeral services and burials for a another three victims in the fire (28-year-old Anton Kukhin, his 5-year-old son, Ratibor, and 10-year-old Liza Sypko) took place later in the day.

“We hit record too late”

Days after the fire, some victims were still recuperating at a local hospital. On Wednesday, March 28, Andrey Ivanov, the chief physician at Kemerovo's regional trauma center, said 11 people from the “Winter Cherry” were being treated at his facility’s toxicology wing. On Tuesday, the hospital discharged three people injured in the fire.

At a press briefing, Ivanov explained that he would not permit journalists to see the victims because psychologists were working with them, and interviews might aggravate their condition. Instead, the doctor proposed an alternative: He would bring out two victims to meet with reporters. A few minutes later, nurses wheeled in a bed and a drip, and nearly a dozen television cameras set up to record. The doctor explained to the journalists that he had invited two patients to meet with them: a woman who had been in a children’s playroom at the mall, when the fire broke out, and Mikhail Trusov, who lost his two small children in the blaze. Ivanov said Trusov had only just begun speaking again, thanks to efforts by psychologists. He asked members of the press not to get too close, and to limit themselves to superficial questions.

Trusov came out wearing an Adidas tracksuit. A journalist from Rossiya 1 asked him to remove the jacket, warning that viewers might interpret it to be advertising. Slightly taken aback, Trusov complied. Then he was asked to say how he was feeling. “I'm coughing up black phlegm and I've got palpitations,” he said, glancing at the doctor.

“Damn it! We hit record too late. Let's start over,” the TV man said. Trusov obediently repeated what he had said for the camera almost word for word; the doctor, frowning, gave him a few recommendations on camera.

After this, the Rossiya 1 correspondent asked Trusov if he’d lost anyone in the fire. Dr. Ivanov shot the journalist a look of surprise. Trusov started to describe what had happened: He’d taken his daughters, ages eight and four, to the “Winter Cherry” to see a movie. In the middle of the show, they realized that the mall was on fire. “We held out for around 15 minutes, then we began to lose consciousness,” he said. “I decided we couldn't wait — we had to try to get out. We broke the lock off the emergency exit, but didn't go out because it wasn't clear if we’d be walking into fire. But then I did go out through the fire exit and went to find help. I got out, took literally a couple of steps, and collapsed because it was impossible to breathe. I wanted to go back for the children, but I couldn't. Then somebody picked me up and carried me out.” He said there were 30 or 40 people in the auditorium but he was the only one who managed to get out alive. By the time he broke through the emergency exit, he says, everyone in the theater was “out cold.”

Ivanov interrupted Trusov and ordered him to go rest. When Trusov had gone out, the doctor turned to the journalists and said angrily, “What do you think you're doing, colleagues! I asked you to stay away from Mikhail's feelings! I told you he lost his daughters!” But the journalists were already leaving.

The second patient never came out. She changed her mind at the last minute.