Russian Government Covers-Up Details of Deadly Fire in Vladivostok

 

Sberbank Building in Vladicostok, Russia

On Monday, January 23, 2006 at approximately 11:45 AM (local time) a fire broke out inside a 9-story building in the city of Vladivostok, located on the Russian Pacific coast. The fire began on the 7th floor and affected the floors above; The 7th floor was occupied by Sberbank where the majority of employees were women 20-30 years of age. When firefighters arrived, they were instructed to enter the side of the back of the building which was not on fire and evacuate the bank’s top management staff.

 Meanwhile, lower-level employees on the top floors of the front side of the burning building were unable to escape the flames due to gates which were blocking the stairwells. Chief Regional Prosecutor, Alexander Anikin stated, “Some of the stairwells were barred… The evacuation was hindered.”. The evacuation was hindered further by the presence of a commercial parking lot located on the front side of the building. This parking lot was in violation of safety regulations and prevented firefighters from reaching employees in time. The building had no fire escape, emergency exits or other means of evacuation.

 At least fifteen employees jumped from the building to escape the fire; Three jumpers died. Bystander Ivan Petrov who witnessed three women jump from the building to escape the fire told NTV, “They waited until the very last moment. One woman was hanging beneath a window. She hung on and on… and then she let go.”. Although criminal cases were opened following the fire to investigate the blatant violation of fire safety regulations and lethal negligence, ultimately, no one was held responsible. The Russian government withheld information about the incident from the public and originally denied the incident altogether telling the public via official Russian media that the fire was a “rumor”.

 The official death toll, according to the Russian government was nine; Six died on the scene (including one person whose body was discovered inside the building hours later) and three who died after being rushed to the hospital. An additional fifteen were reported to have been hospitalized due to injuries.
But survivors of the event tell a very different story; According to employees who were rescued, the corridors of the building were filled with dead bodies and the death toll was much more significant than Russian officials will admit.  One of the building’s maintenance employees who wished to remain anonymous stated, “I know at least about thirteen dead inside …Not to consider those who’ve dropped down … Eight of them dropped, looking at the three already dead on the ground, but they went through the windows without hope to be rescued … They collected and hid the dead bodies inside.” On the evening of January 23, after the fire was extinguished, several employees were allowed into the building to recover documents.

 One of these employees, who had worked on the 6th floor of the building shared what he had seen inside with his sister, Lelya, “My brother worked in that building, on the 6th floor… After the fire they visited the building to collect the documents… They saw how workers transported the dead bodies. He said, there were 50-60 [dead bodies]”.

A resident of Vladivostok spoke out following the fire, claiming, “The cops, whom I know, say that they’ve been loading the dead bodies all night long.”. It is believed approximately 70 people were killed in total. Lelya, and many like her, have been working to piece together the story of what actually happened.

 Unfortunately, when new information regarding the incident emerges on the internet is is quickly edited or removed by the Russian government making it difficult for citizens to share their evidence with one another. Despite the government’s best efforts to cover-up the truth, Russian citizens know the information they have been told regarding the fire is false and they are speaking out.

One Russian woman asserted, “My daughter worked in a justice department. She said that there were actually much more dead- up to 70. She went on [about] the dead bodies, getting out from the building… Some of them were so scorched, that it was impossible to identify them… Nine victims? That’s a lie!”

Due to lax enforcement of safety regulations in the country, Russia’s rate of death by fire is ten times that of the United States.
The following video is of the Sberbank Fire in Vladivostock, Russia on January 23, 2006. It contains graphic, disturbing images and depictions of death. Please use discretion.

Photos courtesy News.VL.ru
Check out the NEW BOOK by The Post-Mortem Post’s Head Writer ‘Horrible History: Mass Suicides’ AVAILABLE NOW on Amazon Kindle!
If you love The Post-Mortem Post, please consider contributing on Patreon.com! 
Follow us on Twitter @PostMortem_post & Like The Post-Mortem Post on Facebook

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like Fire Escape Collapse, Chilling 9/11 Video, Turbine Inferno and Boris Nemtsov Murdered in Moscow 

 

347 Killed in ‘The Cambodian Crush’, an Epic Human Pile-Up and Entanglement

 

Investigators search through clothing and personal belongings left on Rainbow Bridge the morning after the fatal incident.

Bon Om Touk or ‘The Water Festival’, held in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, is a three-day-long celebration of the end of the monsoon season and the semiannual reversal of flow at the Tonle Sap River. The festival is held at Koh Pich or “Diamond Island” and is the biggest Cambodian celebration drawing in as many as 1/3 of Cambodia’s 14 million residents each year. On Sunday, November 21, 2010 approximately 4 million people were attending the festival on its third and final day. The Rainbow Bridge, or the north bridge, was built specifically for the 2010 Water Festival as a 164-foot  (50 meters) long one-way path for people leaving the celebration on the island to return to the city. Those who were entering the festival from the city were to use the south bridge; However, regulations at the festival were lax and The Rainbow Bridge was closer to the excitement so many chose to use it, regardless of which direction they were traveling. Many had gathered on the bridge to get a better view of the boat race as the festival crowd grew in anticipation of a concert that evening. At around 9:30 PM (local time) something occured which led to a tragedy of 70s-disaster-movie-proportions. Due to the chaos that followed, no one is sure what sparked the initial panic. Some believe sightings of the bridge swaying and rumors it would collapse caused mass hysteria in the crowd, others claim they saw rope lights on the bridge beginning to spark. More likely theories claim a fight broke out leading police to fire a water cannon at the bridge which caused bystanders to run out of the way. Employees of ‘So-Cheata’, a soft-drink vendor at the festival said ten people fainted (rumored to be due to mass food poisoning) and caused others nearby to panic. Whatever the cause, well over a thousand people who were on the bridge at that time were compacted together, knocked over and entangled in a massive pile-up which led to hundreds of fatalities as those trapped at the bottom were trampled and crushed to death by the crowd. Sean Ngu, an Australian visiting friends and family in the country described the horror he witnessed, “There were too many people on the bridge and then both ends were pushing. This caused a sudden panic. The pushing caused those in the middle to fall to the ground, then [get] crushed. Panic started and at least fifty people jumped into the river. People tried to climb on the bridge, grabbing and pulling [electrical] cables which came loose and electrical shock caused more death.”. Another survivor, Lin, spoke of his experience, “I realized I could not  move. I could not go back, I could not go forward. People were pushing from everywhere and there was nothing I could do. I was right in the middle, everyone around me was falling, one on top of the other, they were being crushed. There were dead people all around me.”

 Lin’s girlfriend, Ni, was in the middle of the stampede with him and survived as well. Twenty-nine year old Kim Houng claimed if it wasn’t for his brother, he would have died, “I could not move my body. I could not move my legs. It was hard to breathe. They stepped on my head, my face, my body. If not for my brother, I’d be dead… I thought I’d die.” Sadly, Sopheap Meng’s brother was not as lucky; Sopheap grabbed his brother’s hand as tightly as he could, “But there was no air, I could not breathe. I got pushed to the side of the bridge, people were falling all around, onto my arm and I had to let go.”. Sopheap Meng’s brother was found dead later that evening. It took hours for emergency workers to untangle the survivors and remove dead bodies from the bottom of the pile.

 Van Thon, 25, remembered witnessing the aftermath, “People were carrying bodies of relatives, including children and woman. Everyone was looking scared.”. Most of the victims were women and children. Of the 347 killed, 240 of the victims were female. An additional 755 people were injured. Accorrding to medical and emergency workers who examined the deceased, the two main causes of death were suffocation and electric shock; However, the Cambodian government denies anyone was electrocuted.

Although this was the third incident in the Water Festival’s history that had resulted in fatalities, it was incomparable to anything that had happened previously; Five rowers had drowned at the festival in 2008 and one in 2009. The Cambodian health system is underdeveloped and hospitals struggle to keep up with daily demand.
A disaster of this proportion completely overwhelmed hospitals in the area which were overcrowded with victims, both living and deceased. Nearby Calmette Hospital set up a white tent on hospital grounds and filled it with uncovered bodies that had yet to be identified. Family members would walk through the tent searching for missing relatives. Once the victim’s identity was confirmed, they were covered with a sheet. Boupha Lak found the body of her daughter inside the tent and spoke with reporters while gently stroking her daughter’s feet, waiting for paperwork to be completed, “She went to the festival to see her friends, but she was alone on the bridge when it happened. Her friends I have seen today, they were on the other side [of the bridge]. She was found on the bridge, crushed underneath all the other bodies. They told me she was on the bottom.”. All the victims’ bodies had been identified and removed by the evening following the fatal disaster. 
The following video is footage from a local Cambodian news station covering the incident at the 2010 Water Festival and shows hundreds of people in the human pile-up tangled together. (It is one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen and is definitely worth watching).
Check out the NEW BOOK by The Post-Mortem Post’s Head Writer ‘Horrible History: Mass Suicides’ AVAILABLE NOW on Amazon Kindle!

The Post-Mortem Post is now on Pinterest!
If you love The Post-Mortem Post, please consider contributing on Patreon.com! 
Follow us on Twitter @PostMortem_post & Like The Post-Mortem Post on
Facebook

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like Faces of Death, Everybody Poops: The Postmortem Edition, Nepal Earthquake and Who is Green Boots?

Survivors of Spontaneous Human Combustion

In 2013 a 9-day-old infant, “Baby Rahul”, made headlines when his mother, Rajeshwari Karnan admitted him to a local hospital in India to seek treatment for his burns which she claimed were caused by spontaneous combustion. Rahul was discovered lying in his bed, on fire, by a neighbor who heard the child’s screams. Professor R. Jayachandran, Rahul Karnan’s pediatrician believed his burns may have been caused by gasses expelling through his skin and theorized it may be a genetic condition. Twenty-five year old Rajeshwari has an older daughter, Narmatha, who has never suffered a believed instance of SHC. Since Rahul’s initial incident, Rajeshwari claims her son has spontaneously ignited on three other occasions. In January 2015 Rajeshwari Karnan admitted Rahul’s 10-day-old baby brother to Kilpauk Hospital in India after his feet supposedly caught fire while she was in the bath. The unnamed baby’s had burns covering 10% of his feet and had to spend over one month in the hospital recovering. The hospital was incredibly reluctant to release the newborn from the believing one of the parents, most likely Rajeshwari, was suffering from Munchausen by proxy syndrome and had set fire to her own children for attention. “Munchausen Moms”, mothers who harm their children to gain attention and sympathy (usually by way of slowly poisoning their children) have gained infamy in the past few decades as this mental illness which can affect either parent, but usually the mother, has seemingly become more widespread. Hospital dean Narayana Babu stated, “All tests reveal he [unnamed Baby Karnan] is completely normal. The parents went through psychiatric counselling and were found to be normal.”. The Karnans told reporters their community has ostracized them after the repeated burnings of their two children.

Frank Baker claims he has survived repeated instances of “partial spontaneous combustion” which he was diagnosed by a doctor. The doctor who supposedly diagnosed Frank with “partial spontaneous combustion” has never come forward or been mentioned by name. The first time Frank burst into flames, it was witnessed by a close friend. Frank claims he has spontaneously combusted three times since the initial incident. For several years, Frank Baker has been soliciting money for “Spontaneous Combustion Research”. I am not convinced, but here is his story in his own words.

Jack Angel is probably the most well-known survivor of SHC when in fact, he never experienced spontaneous combustion nor did he claim to. On November 12, 1974 Jack Angel was taking a shower in his mobile home in Savannah, Georgia when the water suddenly stopped flowing. When he went to check the water pressure, he was sprayed with scalding hot water. Jack Angel filed a civil-action suit in the Fulton County Superior Court over the burns which he received after being sprayed by the faulty water tank. Somehow, the accounts of this run-of-the-mill lawsuit has morphed into a wildly false story of surviving spontaneous human combustion. Today, people claim Jack Angel fell asleep on a water mattress and awoke to find a hole burnt in his stomach but his clothing intact. During the lawsuit with the water mattress company a doctor confirmed at the trial that Jack Angel had burned from the inside out.
Check out the NEW BOOK by The Post-Mortem Post’s Head Writer ‘Horrible History: Mass Suicides’ AVAILABLE NOW on Amazon Kindle!
If you love The Post-Mortem Post, please consider contributing on Patreon.com!
Follow us on Twitter @PostMortem_post and Like The Post-Mortem Post on Facebook
If you enjoyed this article, you might also like Evidence Suggests Spontaneous Human Combustion is a Reality, A Witness to Spontaneous Human Combustion and Other Stories of SHC, Cause of Death: Spontaneous Human Combustion and Other Stories of SHC and Children Who Remember Dying in Terrorist Attacks in their Past-Life

Imaginary Murders on the Rise

On May 12, 2015 a man in Jacksonville, Florida turned himself in to the local Sheriff for the murder of his best friend. Thirty-seven year old Geoff Gaylord stabbed his friend of seven years repeatedly with a kitchen knife before dismembering the body with a hatchet and burying him in the backyard. Geoff Gaylord told police of the murder, “It was an overreaction. I should have listened to the neighbor lady and got us into counseling, but no, I did the unthinkable and killed my best friend. I’m a terrible, terrible person and I need to be punished.”. Despite his gruesome confession for the murder, Mr. Gaylord will not be charged with homicide because the friend he killed happens to be imaginary. Geoff’s imaginary friend, Mr. Happy, was suffering from drug and alcohol addiction at the time of his murder and it became too much for Gaylord to handle. According to the statement given to police, the two friends had not had a “real conversation” in at least a year and had begun to drift apart as Mr. Happy’s addictions intensified. Geoff Gaylord claimed, “His room was a mess all the time with his toys and dolls. He left his empty vodka bottles all over the kitchen… Never picked up his empty cocaine baggies… He messed up my apartment to the point where I just couldn’t get it clean… Before Hap started doing drugs and acting weird he was my BFF… We’d go dancing, play on the children’s park equipment, both huge fans of doom metal- listened to it for hours with the lights turned off.” and that Mr. Happy “left the toilet seat down when he peed.”. The breaking point came when Mr. Happy crashed Gaylord’s Nissan ALTIMA after the two had been out celebrating Mr. Happy’s birthday at a local Hooter’s. Geoff Gaylord was ultimately arrested for the incident despite the fact that his imaginary friend had been the one driving. Gaylord stated, “That drunk driving incident I got unfairly blamed for and just how messy he had become put me over the edge and I murdered him.”. Horrified by his own crime, Mr. Gaylord, who was incredibly intoxicated at the time of his confession, insisted upon the death penalty “right now” and threatened police when they refused to sentence him as he desired; Instead he was arrested for threatening police, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of an illegal machine gun discovered inside his home. Disappointingly, it is more likely than not that this story which was originally published on Moron.com is nothing more than a hoax. Geoff Gaylord’s mug shot is in fact a photo of a man named Billy Southern which appeared in a gallery of “Crying Mugshots” that went viral in 2011.

  Recently, fake stories on imaginary murders have become somewhat popular. According to a fake story published in 2013, Doug Byron, a resident of Bangour, Maine went to his local police station and confessed to the murders of eight people who he claimed had occurred over a span of two years. M. Byron led police to eight shallow graves just outside the town of Milford and turned over journals in which he detailed how he had selected and stalked his victims before murdering them. The descriptions of the killings were so detailed and gruesome police believed him to be a serial killer… Until they dug up the graves of his victims and found nothing but dirt. Police Chief Lou Foster stated, “This is weird even for Maine. I mean, he’s so sure he committed a crime, but he hasn’t. He led us to eight graves in the woods, but all he’d done was dig a big hold and then refilled it. The journals are packed with grisly details, and I probably wont sleep for a week, but they’re just works of fiction.”. Although these stories are just as real as the victims, let’s pretend for a moment Geoff Gaylord and Doug Byron did murder and dismember the bodies of their imaginary friends. As we all know, it is perfectly normal for children to have an imaginary friend or two or ten. During childhood, imaginary friends are used as a device to experiment with early socialization. In the hypothetical case of Geoff Gaylord, it seems Mr. Happy began as a substitute for authentic socialization. As Gaylord recalled, he and Mr. Happy spent a lot of time going out dancing and listening to doom metal music together. While it seems Mr. Gaylord did in fact have some underlying mental and/or addiction issues, many mentally stable adults have imaginary friends to help them cope with loneliness and social anxiety. As Geoff Gaylord’s struggle with addiction and hoarding intensified, it was easier for him to blame Mr. Happy than to face his own problems. In killing his imaginary friend he was, in a way, “killing” the bad habits which he had projected onto Mr. Happy; If Mr. Happy dies, there will be no more DUIs, no more drugs or trash in the apartment. Murdering Mr.Happy may have also been an indirect attempt by Gaylord to punish himself for the bad behavior which he is, at the very least, subconsciously aware he is responsible for. He permanently ended the illusion of Mr. Happy by “murdering” his imaginary (and possibly only) friend. Doug Byron, it seems, had different motives behind the manifestation and murders of his imaginary friends. Despite his confession and remorse for committing the murders, they were all meticulously pre-meditated. Usually, serial killers who get away with their crimes are highly intelligent; Perhaps planning and “getting away with” killing was gratifying for Doug Byron’s ego. He may have begun killing in hopes it would boost his self-confidence. Murders often claim the “god-like” feeling they experience from having control over another human’s life and death is their primary motivation to kill. For Mr. Byron, creating imaginary people to murder  may have been a way to replicate this feeling of total control without actually having to harm anyone. As with any serial killer who turns themselves in, Doug Byron would have only done so after he felt, for whatever reason, he could no longer continue his way of life. The eight innocent, imaginary people Doug Byron created and killed were very likely created based on who he pictured as his ideal “type” to kill. As police stated, his journals detailed how he selected and murdered his victims. For Doug Byron, the journals were a way to document and relive his imaginary fantasies over and over, each time making them just a little better, by his standards; Very similar to an actual killer. Since these stories were just hoaxes, sadly we will never have the opportunity to read the detailed journals of this mind-boggling “murderer”. But it we just close our eyes, we can imagine all the bizarre and unbelievable things it would say…

Follow us on Twitter @PostMortem_post and Like The Post-Mortem Post on Facebook
If you enjoyed this article, you might also like Everybody Poops: The Post-Mortem Edition, How to Drive a Corpse Cross-Country, The Zombie Cat Parasite, Scared to Death: An April Fool’s Day Fatality, Rasputin’s Pickled Penis, Pascualita: How Much is that Corpse Bride in the Window?, The Woman Who Cannot Die and Chrysippus Died Laughing (Literally)