Up to 13 children have died and one has gone missing after three tourist vessels were caught in a lake storm in Karelia, northwest Russia. Forty-seven children and four adults were in the boats.
20 June 2016
Forensic experts found out that the time of death of different victims of the Syamozero disaster varies widely, Life.ru reported.
The first children died at around 5:30pm local time on June 18, while the last victim of the tragedy passed away at around 2pm on June 19.
Russia's Emergencies Ministry continues to search for the missing child in Karelia
The search for the body of the 14th child, who died in the Syamozero disaster, is continuing, authorities in the Republic of Karelia said.
Yulia Yablochkina, the sister of Karelia boat survivor Alya, shared some of her own thoughts on the camp and how it is run. Recalling her own time there, she says “there were problems with medical care. Many children were constantly ill, and the sick bay only had one or two doctors and only four beds.
“I got sick myself at the end, but had to spend the time lying inside the tent, as there was no available space.
“The camp crew were warned about the weather – I’m 100 percent certain, they were warned. There was information,” she said, adding that everyone among the camp staff had walkie-talkies.
Deputy Prime-Minister Olga Golodec has blamed the accident on an absolute lack of properly trained camp staff.
"The camp didn’t have permission to carry out such boating trips; there were no qualified instructors; there was no appropriate equipment. The investigation will reveal all the violations. But now it’s already clear that the actions of those people were absolutely criminal," Golodets said.
She added that all summer camps will from now on face the strictest checks.
Dmitry Medvedev has commented on the Karelian tragedy, calling it “an obvious case of criminal negligence.”
Footage from a Russian Emergencies Ministry plane, conducting a rescue operation on Syamozero Lake
The instructors from the camp were inexperienced students from the local pedagogical college, children’s rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said.
At least five camp workers have been detained on suspicion of being involved in the lake tragedy, Russia’s Investigative Committee said. They all face up to 10 years in prison.
"Now the investigation has information that when the group was going on its [lake] trip, children asked the instructors not to go, since the camp got rumors of a storm warning, but the instructors insisted on the trip,” said Vladimir Markin, the Committee’s spokesman.
The boyfriend of 19-year-old Lyudmila Vasiliyeva, the swimming instructor who is accused of negligence, told RT that working in the camp was hard for her.
“No one told them about the storm. Children said they didn’t want to go on a trip. Camp workers and instructors were against [it],” he said.
However, the camp coordinator told them to go, the man added.
Vasiliyeva couldn’t leave the camp because working there was a part of her training at the university. “If she left she would have been expelled from the university,” Vasiliyeva’s boyfriend added.
Countries across the world have expressed condolences for the victims of the tragedy in Karelia.
"Our thoughts, condolences and prayers are with the near and dear ones of those who died in Karelia," the spokesman for the US Embassy in Moscow, William Stevens, wrote in a blog on Monday.
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, Kyrgyzstan’s president Almazbek Atambayev and Kazakhstan’s leader Nursultan Nazarbayev also sent letters of condolences to Russia.
An EMERCOM plane has taken the bodies of the children who drowned in the storm to Moscow, sources told Interfax.
An EMERCOM plane will take at least 34 children from the camp, including those injured in the lake tragedy in Karelia, back to Moscow, Karelian officials have said.
The parents of three children drowned in the lake have arrived at the summer camp in Karelia, news portal Life.ru reported.
The funerals of those drowned in the Karelian lake incident will be held in Moscow this Thursday, officials told RIA Novosti.
Karelia has announced Monday June 20 as a day of mourning, the authorities said.
At least 12 children who were injured in the lake storm have been released from hospital, a source in the emergency services told news portal Life.ru. Soon the children will be taken to Moscow by plane.
Kazakhstan’s prime minister, Karim Maksimov, offered his condolences to the Russian government in the wake of the tragedy.
“I express my deepest condolences to Russia’s prime minister Dmitry Medvedev in connection with the tragedy in Karelia that led to the death of children,” Maksimov wrote on Twitter.
Meanwhile, a plane bearing the bodies of the children landed in Moscow, EMERCOM’s press service told TASS.
Moscow’s department of labor and social security has named the 14 children killed in the storm on Lake Syamozero. The victims were from 12 to 13 years old.
Authorities say they were all Moscow residents.
The bodies of the children are being brought to Moscow by plane for an identification procedure, the press service of Russia’s EMERCOME told TASS.
“At 3:05 am Moscow time (0:05GMT), EMERCOME’s IL-76 aircraft took off from Petrozavodsk to Moscow. It carries the bodies of the deceased children,” said the statement.
The children hospitalized in Petrozavodsk are being constantly monitored by Russia’s leading medical facilities via telemedicine, EMERCOME head Vladimir Puchkov said, adding that the patients were checked on every half an hour.
“All children in the hospital are being monitored via telemedicine by the leading medical facilities in the country, including EMERCOME’s All-Russian Center of Emergency and Radiation Medicine,” he said.
The head of Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said that rescue teams from EMERCOM’s Northwest Regional Center, along with drones and the ministry’s air group, have been involved in the rescue efforts.
“EMERCOM’ aviation and drones have been engaged and the whole rescue team is working 24 hours; fortunately we have white nights in Karelia now,” he said at a press conference in Petrozavodsk.
More than 350 people are taking part in the search, said Aleksandr Khudilaynen, the head of the Republic of Karelia.
“If there were lower water temperatures and strong wind, the number of victims could have been higher,” he noted.
Park-Hotel Syamozero had organized an “uncontrollable tourist tour” with “instructors that were a bit older than the children [from the camp],” Khudilaynen added, in commenting on reasons for the tragedy.
19 June 2016
Head of Russia’s EMERCOM, Vladimir Puchkov, demanded that the summer camp involved in the Lake Syamozero tragedy in Karelia be closed.
“Make a decision on the camp tomorrow, close it, and send the children to their mothers and fathers,” he said at a working meeting in Petrozavodsk.
The head of the Republic of Karelia, Aleksandr Khudilaynen, corrected earlier reports claiming that 15 children had died on Lake Syamozero, clarifying that 13 have been confirmed dead and one was unaccounted for.
“Thirteen children have died. The fourteenth has not been found yet,” Khudilaynen said during an operational meeting, adding that rescue crews are continuing their search.
Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said that 12 children have been hospitalized in Petrozavodsk.
“Out of 33 [rescued] children, 12 were taken to medical facilities. There is no threat to their life,” said Igor Panin, head of the Northwest Regional Center of EMERCOM.
Another 21 children are being accommodated at a cadet school, where they are receiving medical aid and food.
Estonia’s foreign minister, Marina Kaljurand, has passed on condolences for the victims of the tragedy in Karelia and their families through Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
“We wholeheartedly sympathize with the families of the victims and with everybody, who has been affected by this tragedy. Our thoughts are with you in this difficult time,” she said in a statement according to RIA.
Ten children from the camp were hospitalized following the storm on Lake Syamozero, local health authorities said.
“At the moment, five children are being treated at Petrozavodsk’s hospitals. Two of them are in the children’s Republican hospital with multiple bruises, chest, and spinal cord bruises, and one child is suffering from a brain concussion,” said Ervand Khidishyan, Karelia’s health minister, adding that their conditions are non-life-threatening.
Another eight children are being taken care of at a hospital specializing in infectious diseases.
“They are under 24 hour surveillance and are being provided with necessary treatment,” he added.
The ages of the patients vary from 11 to 13.
Identification of the children who died in the Karelia lake disaster will be carried out in Moscow on Monday, the Moscow social security authorities have said.
“The identification procedure will take place on June 20,” the authorities confirmed to TASS.
The children who survived the trip will be also brought to Moscow on a special charter flight provided by the Emergencies Ministry on Monday night.
Moscow’s mayor, Sergey Sobyanin, has declared a day of mourning in Moscow due to deaths of 15 children who were on a boat trip in Karelia.
“In connection with the tragedy in Karelia, tomorrow will be declared a day of mourning in Moscow,” he wrote on Twitter.
Speaking to RT, the children who survived the deadly boat trip gave their own accounts of what happened prior to the tragedy.
“The waves were huge and were pounding our raft. They were about two meters high,” said one of the girls.
“We saw them drifting away. They were sailing sideways and their boat was shaking,” a boy added.
“It was really scary,” the girl recalled, adding “We are very worried about our friends.”
Authorities in Karelia said they were going to transfer all of the children remaining in the camp to the city of Petrozavodsk. They will be accommodated at a school for the local cadet corps. The first five children have already arrived, the Republic’s minister of education, Alexander Morozov, has confirmed.
“We are waiting for children, at the moment five people have arrived. The others are about to come. Everything is prepared for them: place, meals, teachers. There are also phycologists and medics, all services are here,” he said, according to TASS.
Morozov hasn’t specified if the victims of the tragedy are among those that have arrived. The corps’ premises have reportedly been cordoned off by the police.
The mother of a child who missed the deadly boat trip because of a cold told RT that she had been displeased with the way things were organized at Park Hotel Syamozero from the start.
The kids’ departure from Moscow to Karelia was poorly planned, and the contact number she had been given for the camp turned out to be out of service, she said.
According to the mother, she could only talk to her son by cell phone, and he said he was bored, as almost none of the activities promised in the camp’s brochure were provided by the organizers.
Watch RT's latest report on the tragedy in Karelia:
The four instructors that took the children on the deadly Karelia boat trip were teens themselves, Rossiya 24 channel reported.
Three were 19 and the youngest, who was 17 years old, is believed to be among the dead.
The fifteenth child, who died in the tragedy on Syamozero Lake, wasn’t registered in the camp, a source within the investigation told tass.
“According to preliminary data, the child wasn’t on the camp’s list,” he said.
The investigators will try to determine if the instructors from the Karelia camp had consumed alcohol on the day of the tragedy, LifeNews reported.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been regularly updated on the ongoing rescue operation in Karelia, Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesman, said.
During the course of the day, he has been in contact with Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov, Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets, and Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin on numerous occasions, he added.
“The president sends his deepest condolences over the tragedy that resulted in the death of children,” Peskov said.
This is not the first time the staff of Hotel Syamozero has been subjected to a criminal investigation, Vladimir Markin, the Investigative Committee spokesman, said.
“Back in 2011 its deputy director beat a security guard to death after consuming alcohol together with him. Currently, he’s serving a 13-year sentence for the crime,” he said.
Fifteen children died in the Karelia lake disaster, according to the latest information, children’s rights ombudsman, Pavel Astakhov, wrote on Twitter.
The children who died in the Lake Syamozero disaster lived in a tent camp that had been set up illegally, Aleksandr Khudilaynen, head of the Republic of Karelia, said.
“Unfortunately, next to the stationary camp there was a spontaneous encampment, organized without permission. The boat trip set off from this camp, which was put up by a commercial entity,” he said.
According to Khudilaynen, the trip began “in extreme conditions, with winds of between 14 and 17 meters per second and waves between 1.5 and 2 meters high.”
Two boats and a raft took to the water. Both boats overturned and the raft was later washed ashore on an island, where the survivors spent “nearly 24 hours,” he said.
There were 26 people aboard the capsized boats, 12 of whom were rescued, Khudilaynen stressed.
Four suspects connected with the tragedy at Syamozero have been detained in Karelia, Vladimir Markin, the Investigative Committee spokesman, said.
They are the head of the Park Hotel Syamozero, Elena Reshetova, her deputy, and two instructors, he added.
All of the victims of the Karelia boat disaster were children born between 2002 and 2004, who were staying at a camp, Vladimir Markin, the Investigative Committee spokesman, said.
There were no adults among the dead, he stressed, denying earlier reports that one of the instructors had died.
An Emergencies Ministry plane will deliver the bodies of the children who died in Karelia to Moscow.
According to Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov, “the plane will take off shortly.”
The families who lost children at Lake Syamozero will each receive compensation of 1 million rubles (around $15,000), Aleksandr Khudilainen, the head of the Republic of Karelia, said.
Children’s rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov has confirmed that orphans were among the children who died in a lake boat disaster in Karelia.
Earlier, Rosturism state agency said that, according to preliminary data, the deceased kids were orphans and children from troubled families, aged between 12 and 15 years old.
The fatalities on Lake Syamozero in Karelia could have been avoided if the boat trip had been properly registered, the press service for the North-Western Emergencies Ministry’s Regional Center told TASS.
"If the camp’s staff had warned the Emergencies Ministry of the boat trip, they would have been accompanied by rescuers or banned from boating due to weather conditions," the press officer said.
The rescuers learned about the disaster from the locals after one of the survivors reached a village on the lakeshore.
“If the group had been registered and wouldn’t have establish communication in due time, the rescue workers would’ve started the search immediately. But here time was lost,” the press service said.
Russia’s Investigative Committee is taking measures to locate and detained two people possibly involved in the Lake Syamozero tragedy.
“As it was previously reported, one suspect has already been detained. The steps are being taken to track down and arrest two other people, hiding from the investigation, as well as those who directly organized the children's holiday,” Vladimir Markin, the Investigative Committee spokesman, said.
The search and rescue operation at Lake Zyamozero has concluded, and the bodies of 14 victims (13 children and 1 adult) were recovered, the Emergencies Ministry’s branch in Karelia said.
The children who died in the boat disaster were between nine and 11 years of age, Aleksey Gavrilov, deputy head of the Committee on Education, Culture, Sports and Youth Affairs at Karelia’s Legislative Assembly, told RT.
Gavrilov stressed that Lake Syamozero is known for being a beautiful, but “cunning” body of water.
He called organizing a boat trip in bad weather a “big mistake” by the summer camp’s administration, adding that there will now be checks at similar organizations across the Karelian Republic.
The death toll in the boat disaster at Lake Syamozero in Karelia, northwest Russia, has reached 14 people, a source in the Emergencies Ministry told Interfax.
“The bodies of 14 victims were lifted from the water. There are no missing persons. The search operation has ended,” the source said.
One child remains missing after tourist boats were caught in a storm at Syamozero, Valentina Ulich, deputy head of Karelia’s government, said.
“One child isn’t yet found. The search continues," Ulich was cited by Tass as saying.
Monday was declared a day of mourning in the Republic of Karelia over those who died on Lake Syamozero.
"June 20 has been declared a day of mourning in Karelia,” the press service of republic’s head, Aleksandr Khudilainen, said.
Five children were hospitalized to local medical facilities after the disaster at Lake Syamozero in Karelia, Russia’s Health Ministry said.
“Hypothermia, minor injuries and stress" were mentioned among the reasons for hospitalization by Oleg Salagaev, who heads the ministry’s Public Health Department.
Those kids who died in the Karelia incident “apparently had no life vests” and those who “were wearing life vests, managed to survive,” children’s rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov told RIA.
Life.ru news portal cited a police source, who talked to a 12-year-old survivor of the Syamozero tragedy.
The girl told the source that the storm caught her and other children on Saturday, she was washed up on the shore on Sunday unconscious. When she regained consciousness, she decided to walk to a nearby village.
On her way she found a boy who was in blood and was unable to move, Life.ru cited the source as saying. The girl told the villagers what happened and they called emergency services.
The fate of four people involved in the lake disaster in Karelia remains unknown, according to the local branch of the Emergencies Ministry.
“The rescue operation is under way. Thirty-six have been rescued. Twenty-five of them are now located on an island, while 11 others are in the Kudama village. The fate of four people is unknown," the press-service told Tass.
One of the instructors, who organized the deadly boat trip in Karelia, has been detained, Vladimir Markin, Investigative Committee spokesman, said in a statement.
“Within the framework of a criminal investigation, legal assessment will be given to the actions of the staff of the children's camp and other responsible parties, which send the children boating in bad weather,” he stressed.
One the instructors has been detained. The investigators are working with him,” Markin added.
All the children who died in the Syamozero Lake boat disaster were from Moscow, the Russian capital’s Mayor, Sergey Sobyanin said, citing preliminary data.
“There has been a great tragedy in Karelia,” Sobyanin said. “According to the preliminary data, 10 children from Moscow have died on Lake Syamozero. Condolences to the families and friends [of the victims],” the mayor wrote on Twitter.
Three boats carrying children were caught in a storm and overturned on Lake Syamozero, Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement.
“According to preliminary reports, on June 18, 2016, the guests of the Park Hotel Syamozero children’s holiday camp were caught in a storm during a boat trip in the lake. Forty-seven children and four adult instructors were aboard the three vessels. During the trip, the boats capsized and sank. As a result 11 children and one instructor were killed,” the statement read.
Russia’s Investigative Committee has launched a criminal case over the death of 12 people as a result of a tourist boat accident on Syamozero Lake in the Pryazhinsky District of the Republic of Karelia, Vladimir Markin, the Investigative Committee spokesman, said in a statement.