A fire at a psychiatric hospital in Russia killed 37 people on Friday in a building that had previously been deemed unsafe by authorities, ABC News reported.
The blaze, which occured at a wooden institution constructed in the 19th century, is the country's second deadly fire at a psychiatric hospital within the past five months and highlights Russia's broad neglect of fire safety standards.
The one-story hospital located in Luka, about 280 miles northwest of Moscow, started around 3 a.m. on Friday and quickly spread throughout the entire building, according to the Emergency Situations Ministry.
The ministry said responders recovered 26 people so far and did not indicate how it confirmed the rest of the deaths.
Russia's top investigative agency said the fire was accidentally caused by a patient, but a chief doctor reportedly claimed the fire was deliberate.
According to a report by State Rossiya 24 television, a witness said the fire was started from a patient smoking a cigarette. A nurse reportedly tried to put out the cigarette flames with a blanket but only caused the flames to spread. The nurse, who was married with four children, died in the fire while trying to rescue patients.
Although Rossiya 24 said the male patient who started the fire was rescued, the hospital's chief doctor, Husein Magomedov, denied the fire was started by a cigarette and said the person who purposely lit the fire died in the blaze.
Firefighters immediately arrived at the scene but said the fire was already out of control.
"Fire spread through the building in a moment," said Boris Borzov, a top firefighting official.
In April, a fire at another psychiatric institution killed 38 people. Russia reported 12,000 fire deaths in 2012. demonstrating their poor fire safety record when compared to the U.S., who has nearly double their population, with only 3,000 fire deaths in 2011.
