At least 10 people died in a fire that broke out early Thursday at a nursing home in the Siberian region of Omsk, according to dpa. The fire began in the upper floor of a three-storey building where 301 people lived, the Omsk emergency services said. When the fire department arrived, large portions of the roof and an entire floor were burning. Four people were injured and taken to hospital with burns, the Interfax news agency reported. Russia repeatedly has fires with large death tolls, primarily because of insufficient safety precautions. Residents of nursing homes, boarding schools and psychiatric clinics, for example, are often unable to escape blazes because exits are blocked. In one of Russia's worst fires, more than 60 residents of a nursing home in southern Russia died in March 2006. Most of the victims were bed-ridden. According to emergency services statistics, 4,977 people died in fires in the first quarter of this year.
