At least a hundred people were killed and a 140 injured last night when a firework display went horribly wrong in a Russian nightclub.
Clubbers rushed for the doors of the Lame Horse nightspot in the centre of Perm, a city of 1.2m, 870 miles east of Moscow, after a pyrotechnics show went disastrously wrong.
Witnesses quoted by local media said a stray firework sparked the blaze during a stage show, prompting panic as hundreds of clubbers rushed for the exits.
Enforcement of fire safety standards in Russia is notoriously lax and in recent years there have been several catastrophic blazes at drug-treatment facilities and apartment buildings.
Russia records nearly 18,000 fire deaths a year, several times the per capita rate in the United States and other Western countries. Nightclub fires have killed thousands of people worldwide.
Ten people died when a so-called "fire show" went out of control at a Moscow club in March 2007.
In February 2008, a fire in the Golden Rock nightclub in the Siberian city of Omsk killed four people. Officials said the blast might have been caused by natural gas.
In Russia it appears they have no health and safety regulations, well at least none that are strict enough and none that anyone seems to take any notice of.
We complain all the time in this Country about what a nuisance our health and safety executive is and how they interfere to much in our lives, but given the appalling loss of life and most of them sadly in their teens, I wont be complaining about our health and safety rules anymore.
What a terrible way to lose your children, in something as innocent as a night out dancing, given the frequency of this type of tragedy, worldwide there should be a immediate and total ban on fireworks indoors, it will take a while for everyone to fall into synch, but if the punishments for breaking the rules are severe enough eventually everyone will fall into line.
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