The parents of three sisters have described receiving desperate phone calls from their trapped daughters just minutes before they died in a locked cinema as flames engulfed a Russian shopping centre. On Monday, a litany of fire safety violations were blamed for the death toll in the fire in the industrial Siberian city of Kemerovo reaching as high as 64. Investigators said fire exits were blocked and the fire alarm system was switched off by a security guard shortly after the fire broke out. Authorities launched a criminal investigation into the fire. Four people were arrested and questioned by police on Monday, including the head of the company responsible for servicing the fire alarm system and the technical director of the company that owned the shopping centre. “Our children burned while we just watched,” said Olga Lillyevyali, who rushed to the shopping centre as the fire was underway, Russian news website Meduza reported. Her three daughters, twins aged 11 and their five-year-old sister, had been dropped off at the cinema by their father, Alexander Lillyevyali, to see children’s film Sherlock Gnomes earlier that afternoon. A view of the smoldering shopping centre from above on Monday morning Credit: Kirill Kukhmar/ TASS When he got a phone call an hour later from one of his daughters to say she was stuck behind locked doors as the fire spread, he raced upstairs. Russian media reported local people saying that the cinemas in the shopping centre locked their doors to stop people entering without a ticket. “I started to crawl but I realised I had no strength,” Mr Lillyevyali. “I had inhaled so much smoke that I was on the verge of fainting. My daughter was ringing and ringing me. I could only shout down the phone that she should try and get out of the cinema but I couldn’t do anything – there were flames in front of me.” Media reports suggested the initial blaze broke out on the fourth floor of the building, possibly at a trampolining centre, and spread rapidly, generating huge clouds of billowing black smoke. Eyewitnesses said that staff did not arrange for evacuation from the building, which was converted from a former confectionery factory in 2013. Some were quick to blame lax regulations on Russia’s fire safety inspection authorities, who have been accused of taking bribes to turn a blind eye to breaches. The Winter Cherry shopping centre, in Kemerovo, engulfed in flames on Sunday Credit: Danil Aikin/TASS via Getty Opposition leader and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny wrote on Monday: “the whole system of fire safety oversight has become a huge trough of corruption. It hasn’t had any other goals for a long time.” The Prosecutor General's Office on Monday ordered all shopping malls in Russia to be checked for fire safety features. President Vladimir Putin, re-elected last weekend, has yet to speak publicly about the tragedy, which has stirred deep anger in Kemerovo, a coal-producing region about 3,600 km (2,200 miles) east of Moscow. The Kremlin published a statement, saying Mr Putin “expressed his deep condolences to the relatives and loved ones of those who died.” It was not immediately clear how many other children had died in the blaze, with authorities saying 8 of the 23 victims so far identified were kids, but the shopping centre was full of families enjoying the first weekend of the Easter school holidays. A young girl from the central Russian city of Kazan, Maya Yerokhina, believed to be among the victims, updated the status on her profile page on Russian social networking site Vkontakte during the fire to read: “this is the end.” Video showed people jumping from windows to escape the flames Credit: Danil Aikin /TASS/Getty An eleven-year old boy was in intensive care on Monday after jumping from a third-floor window to escape the thick smoke during a dramatic escape caught on camera. Both his parents and a sibling were reported to have died. One piece of footage aired by state television showed people desperately trying to escape by battering down a closed door as flames crept closer. Eight children, mostly aged between 11 and 12, from the same school in the local village of Treschevsky perished in the blaze while on a trip marking the end of the school term. One of the girls from the group, 12-year old Viktoriya Pochankina, reportedly got through to her aunt from the burning cinema and asked her aunt to tell her mother she loved her. The ceilings of two cinema theaters in the mall reportedly collapsed Some 200 animals, including rabbits, turtles, pigs, goats are also believed to have died in the shopping centre's petting zoo. As Russia tried to process what had happened, an official period of mourning was declared and locals brought flowers and candles to the blackened remains of the shopping centre. One sign left at the site read: “Forgive us, children.” Local hospitals reported an influx of people wanting to donate blood for the victims. Stories of feats of bravery also emerged. Local schoolteacher Tatyana Darsaliya, 36, reportedly led her own daughter to safety and then returned to the burning building to try and save other children. Darsaliya’s daughter, Eleonora, wrote on Monday that her mother had “died like a hero.” Flames lick a window frame at the shopping centre, where some witnesses said the fire alarm did not go off Credit: Danil Aikin/TASS/Barcroft Images Roof collapsed in two cinemas at shopping centre Preliminary findings of an inquiry said the fire started in one of the cinema halls and destroyed more than 10,700 square feet (1,000 square metres) of the centre, news agencies reported. “The roof collapsed in two theatres in the cinema,” the Investigative Committee said. Hundreds of firefighters battled the blaze for hours Credit: Danil Aikin/TASS via Getty Around 120 people had been evacuated from the burning centre, rescuers said. “This shopping centre on several floors was packed with people mid-day Sunday,” said Alexandre Eremeyev, an official with the local Russian emergency services ministry. Burnt debris outside the shopping centre Credit: Maxim Grigoryev /TASS/Getty He added: “No one knows exactly how many people there were inside when the fire broke out. “Where to look for people? How many are there? That has greatly complicated the work of the firefighters.” Hundreds of firefighters spend hours tackling blaze Around 300 firefighters and rescue personnel rushed to the scene and tackled the blaze for more than 17 hours. Russia's minister of emergency services, Vladimir Putchkov has gone to Kemerovo, RIA Novosti said. Hundreds of firefighters were scrambled to the scene Credit: Danil Aikin /TASS/Getty Deadliest blaze in Russia for almost a decade The Winter Cherry shopping centre fire was the deadliest blaze in Russia in recent years: A shopping centre fire in March 2015 killed 11 people in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan some 500 miles east of Moscow. In April 2013, a fire ravaged a psychiatric hospital in the Moscow region, killing 38 people, most of them patients who were engulfed by flames as they slept behind barred windows. Just months later, in September 2013, 37 people were killed when a fire swept through a psychiatric hospital in the village of Luka in northwest Russia. In 2009, 156 were killed in a nightclub fire in the city of Perm, 745 miles east of Moscow in one of the deadliest accidents in Russia's modern history.
