Of course, the fire in the Rossiya Hotel in 1977 became one of the global incidents with a minus sign for the entire Soviet country. As a result, nearly fifty citizens lost their lives, and some received serious harm to their health. Despite the fact that almost forty years have passed since the fire of the elite hotel, people still can not forget this terrible episode in the history of Moscow. Why did a fire occur in the Rossiya Hotel in 1977, and what are the magnitude of the consequences that it brought? Consider these issues in more detail.
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The aforementioned hotel was built in 1967 in the historical Zaryadye district, not far from the Moscow Kremlin. At that time, it was perhaps the largest facility in Europe for accommodating guests, since its capacity was about 5300 people. “Russia” was a whole 4 twelve-tier buildings of a rectangular shape. In the center of the facade stood a tower 23 floors high. In the southern part of the building were a cinema and a huge concert hall.
Of course, "Russia" from the first days of opening has established itself as an elite hotel. Not everyone could afford to rent a room in it. Soviet stars, officials and representatives of foreign delegations preferred to stay at the hotel.
“Russia” closed its doors in early 2006. Currently, in its place it is planned to break up a large square.
How did it happen
The tragedy occurred on February 25, 1977. The fire in the hotel "Russia" arose when the famous satirist Arkady Raikin spoke to a huge audience in the concert hall. The hall was tearing up stomachs with laughter, and a few hundred meters from the audience the hotel guests tried to escape from the flames, jumping from the windows.
One of the eyewitnesses said that the people who were present at the concert felt the “smoky” smell only towards the end of the second part, and even then at first very few people attached importance to this. Only when the audience began to move towards the exit, where police officers were already looming, did it become clear that something out of the ordinary had happened.
They called the fire department when the clock was 21 hours 23 minutes. The lights on the remote control have previously worked, which in the event of an emergency immediately respond to smoke sensors mounted in each room.
The corridor of the fifth tier, located in the northern part of the building, smoked in the blink of an eye. Then, one by one, the calls began to signal a fire. The fire covered several floors at once (4th, 7th, 9th, 11th), and in different areas of the hotel.
People panic
Seeing with their own eyes the fire in the hotel "Russia" in 1977, the guests cry for help, asking them to evacuate the building by an emergency staircase. One of the high-ranking officials of Bulgaria by the name of Ivanov, in a panic, asks to immediately fit the helicopter. Unfortunately, he didn’t manage to escape then and he suffocated from carbon monoxide in his room.
Others, while waiting for the firefighters to arrive, try to escape themselves: with the help of knitted sheets, people want to get out of the windows, but the “bedding” fabrics can’t stand it, as a result of which the guests die.
The largest group of people was blocked in the Kremlin restaurant, which was located on the top floor of the building. They knocked glass out of windows so as not to die from carbon monoxide. The situation was complicated by the fact that the length of the stairs that firefighters initially armed was not enough to provide timely assistance to people in the Kremlin. Only three hours later, which for the guests turned out to be an eternity, did salvation come. Rescuers with the help of special cats (ropes with hooks) were able to get to the fire and evacuate people.
Operational work of rescuers
To extinguish a fire in the hotel "Russia" in 1977, 14 cars arrived. They arrived at 21:40. By this time, fire was already a huge danger to people. After a quarter of an hour, the fire in the Rossiya Hotel in 1977 eliminated 56 fire brigades. In a matter of minutes, a city-wide alarm was announced, and fire engines began to arrive from Moscow suburbs one after another . Subsequently, it was estimated that the fire in the Russia Hotel in 1977 was able to be extinguished with the help of 35 tank trucks, 97 water guns, 61 car pumps and almost 20 stairs. Over 1,400 firefighters took part in the elimination of fire.
It should be noted that the flame spread throughout the hotel very, very quickly, since the interior of the building provided for wallpaper and a plastic floor. As already emphasized, the process of saving people was complicated by the fact that the stairs reached only the 7th tier, so people on the upper floors a priori had low chances of salvation. Employees of the “01” service were forced to quickly connect the assault ladders with hooks to extend the structure and reach the upper tiers. But still it took a certain period of time, so not everyone was saved.
Law enforcement agencies found that the fire in the Rossiya Hotel in 1977 in Moscow entailed quite serious consequences in the form of 52 injured and 42 dead people. Even some employees of the 01 service were forced to go to the hospital, where they received medical care.
Who's guilty
Naturally, an investigation into the incident was initiated to find out who started or what triggered the fire at the Rossiya Hotel in 1977. The reasons for the tragedy were put forward different. Naturally, all of them were not official. Some said that the case was not without criminal showdowns.
Others said the fire, they say, arose due to the fact that the Interior Ministry intended to damage the "secret" equipment of the KGB. There were also rumors that the fire had been caused by foreign spies.
It is noteworthy that the fire in the Rossiya Hotel in 1977, the photo of which was practically not featured on the pages of the Soviet media, was not covered in detail by the press.
One way or another, but immediately after the incident, when the detectives had not yet ascertained the true causes of what had happened, repair work began in a hurry in Russia.
Expert opinion
“Many years of experience in eliminating fire convinces me that all versions are bad, except for one - arson. One source of ignition is unlikely to provoke a flame in gigantic proportions. It is possible that we will not find out the real culprit of the tragedy, since the participation of representatives of law enforcement agencies in this story is quite real, ”said one of the experts.
Official investigation
Seeing what the Rossiya Hotel became after the fire in 1977, the authorities simply had to respond and instruct them to conduct an investigation, which, in fact, was done.
A special commission was formed, which for more than six months "understood" this complicated story. But tangible results in the investigation were not achieved. Presumably, the cause of the fire was the “unconnected” soldering iron in the hotel’s radio center. However, this version has not become official. And experts doubted its truth. The fact is that in reality a fire arose in several parts of the hotel at once, and not at any one point.
The punishment is “inevitable”
Nevertheless, according to Soviet laws it followed that those responsible should have been found and incurred a “well-deserved” punishment. The senior engineer and the head of the low-current section were taken into custody and after a court hearing they received a sentence of imprisonment of 1.5 and 1 year respectively. The shift supervisor, who was on duty that ill-fated day, returned home after talking with the investigator, drank alcohol and committed suicide. The director, the chief engineer of the hotel and the employee of the fire inspection, who signed the act on state acceptance of the building, did not escape responsibility.
But then the Soviet Themis showed humanism towards these individuals, and they were amnestied.
Film
Thirty years after the tragedy, director A. Tiesenhausen created a documentary called the Fire at the Russia Hotel. In it, he tried to reconstruct the events of the second half of the 70s and investigate the causes of the tragedy. Moreover, he managed to get some documents of law enforcement agencies under the heading "top secret." On the scale and consequences of the fire in the film, its eyewitnesses share their points of view: journalists, fire experts, investigators, hotel employees.