The nursing home in Siberia has been de-registered and authorities are now inspecting similar facilities.
A fire has destroyed a nursing home for the elderly in the Siberian city of Kemerovo, killing at least 22 people, Russian emergency services said.
The fire burned the entire second floor of the building, which was not officially registered as a retirement home, Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency and fire officials said on Saturday.
It broke out on Friday in the two-storey wooden building in Kemerovo, around 3000 kilometers east of the capital Moscow. The fire was brought under control a few hours later.
The cause of the fire was not immediately determined, according to the Tass news agency, but the building was heated with stoves.
It was not clear how many people lived in the privately run facility or how many were in the building at the time the fire broke out.
Officials said many retirement homes across Russia operate without registration and could not be inspected as they are officially considered private property.
However, Tass reported that the region’s governor said all facilities of this type would be inspected after the fire.
“We will check all institutions of this type, especially private ones. The inspections will be completed within a week,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.
In 2018, a fire in a shopping center in Kemerovo killed 64 people.