ST. PETERSBURG. April 26 (Interfax) - The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry detected around four violations of mandatory fire safety requirements during a surprise inspection in April in the village of Sosva, in Russia's Urals, Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Kurenkov said.
"A surprise on-site inspection was carried out in the populated locality of Sosva from April 6 to April 12 as part of preventive measures during preparations for the fire hazard season. Four violations of mandatory fire safety requirements were found during it," Kurenkov told reporters on Wednesday.
Emergency Situations Ministry staff ordered that the violations be fixed, the minister said. Administrative sanctions have already been imposed on the officials responsible for this.
As has been reported, several fires broke out in populated localities in Russia's Sverdlovsk region on Tuesday.
More than 40 buildings, including 23 houses, were damaged in the village of Tayozhny in the Makhnyovo municipality. The fire was contained to an area of 2,700 square meters. The blaze destroyed more than 110 buildings in Sosva before it was contained to an area of 9,000 square meters. One theory suggests that the flames spread from a nearby sawmill which caught fire. More than 200 people have been evacuated from a penal colony located near Sosva. A fire also broke out in the village of Visim, where ten houses burned down.
The firefighting operation involved more than 505 people and 138 pieces of hardware, including two firefighting trains and a Mil Mi-8 helicopter of the Emergency Situations Ministry.
Apart from this, an Emergency Situations Ministry operative group, led by Deputy Minister Ilya Denisov, has arrived in the Sverdlovsk region to coordinate the firefighting efforts.