Heating pipe bursts in Russian hotel, boiling water kills 5

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

MOSCOW (AP) — A heating pipe burst Monday in small Russian hotel, flooding rooms with boiling water that killed five people and left six others injured in the city of Perm, emergency officials said.

The nine-room hotel was located in the basement of a residential building in the city located near Russia’s Ural Mountains. All of the victims — who included a child — were staying at the hotel, authorities said. Three of the injured were hospitalized with burns.

Russian police have opened a probe into the tragedy.

The plumbing explosion left 20 buildings, including a hospital, a school and a kindergarten, without heat or hot water in the middle of winter, local authorities said.



In this image made from video provided by Russian Emergency Situations Ministry press service, shows a view of a damaged hotel of nine rooms located in the basement of a residential building which was flooded with boiling water after a pipe ruptured in Perm, Russia, Monday, Jan. 20, 2020. Russian emergency services say heating pipe damage caused deaths and injuries. (Ministry of Emergency Situations press service via AP)


Read more: https://apnews.com/58e80f285cf8b0ea163d9d9a7c0208ee

[dewsgirl]

1. Yikes, what an awful way to go.

[Sherman A1]

2. Sad

[2naSalit]

3. Horrible!

And it's really cold there so all those other residents will be hard pressed to find heated shelter. Yikes.

[milestogo]

4. Trump deregulation?

[Igel]

5. Ouch.

Deaths, with the additional fallout that a block or two in the middle of near-Siberian winter was without heat. (The Soviet way of building--have a central heating facility for a lot of buildings. Efficient, easier to run and certainly more top-down. But if it goes on the blink then a lot of people are affected, not just the one building.)

[Talitha]

6. ...

[dalton99a]

7. Not uncommon in Russia:

[IronLionZion]

8. Basement living can be dangerous, since it's harder to escape

and the pipes are located there. Hot water and cold winter can sometimes be too much for old pipes that aren't properly insulated.

We've had underground water main pipes burst here in DC. No one died of course. But they claimed it was the cold temperatures.