MOSCOW — The number of people killed in an apartment building in central Russia that partly collapsed after an explosion rose to 22 on Wednesday, as hope dwindled that 20 others still missing would be found alive.
Rescue work at the site was interrupted for long periods because of fears that more walls would crumble, more than 48 hours after the explosion at 6 a.m. on Monday in the city of Magnitogorsk caught many residents asleep in their beds.
Only one ambulance was standing by, according to local news reports, signaling the diminished chances of pulling more residents from the pancaked rubble of some 25 apartments in the freezing cold.
The apartment complex was home to around 1,300 people before the explosion, which left a gaping hole in the extensive facade. But the Emergencies Ministry declared that most of the building remained fit for habitation.
The temperature in Magnitogorsk, an industrial city at the southern end of the Urals, more than 1,000 miles east of Moscow, hovers just over 1 degree Fahrenheit (minus 17 degrees Celsius) in the daytime and minus 20 Fahrenheit or lower overnight.
The last victim found alive was an 11-month-old boy, identified as Ivan, who had survived for more than 35 hours in the rubble. He was evacuated to Moscow after the chief executive of the state-run Russian bank Sberbank, German Gref, sent an airplane for him.
The boy was in serious but stable condition with leg fractures, superficial head wounds and severe frostbite in his fingers and toes, and doctors were struggling to save his right foot, Veronika Skvortsova, the health minister, said at a news conference.
“His condition is grave, but stable,” she said, with his blood circulation gradually improving. “There is no threat to his life.”
Both of the boy’s parents are alive, officials said.
In a seemingly unrelated development, a minibus exploded overnight near the apartment building, killing three people. That blast was caused by a malfunction in two gas canisters that powered the engine, officials were quoted as saying in local news reports. A gas leak is also the working theory behind the cause of the apartment explosion.
The two explosions in quick succession fed fears in the city that both had been terrorism-related. But officials have denied any such link.
Similar apartment explosions in the past have been caused by Russia’s aging infrastructure and the haphazard enforcement of safety regulations.
Source : Nytimes
