On January 29, 2020, the draft law “On Amending the Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offenses and the Criminal Code of Ukraine on Strengthening the Level of Responsibility for Violating the Requirements of Fire and Technogenic Safety” was approved. So, it is planned to increase the size of the sanction for violation of the fire safety requirements established by the legislation and for failure to comply with the requirements and decisions of officials of the State Emergency Service from 170 to 8500 hryvnas.
The government took these steps after a noticeable increase in the number of fires and their losses, according to the results of 2019 compared to the same period of 2018.
So, according to the statistics Emergency Service of Ukraine, in 2019, 95,915 fires were registered in all over Ukraine. more than 300 of them occurred in public and local authorities.
Interestingly, the situation with sudden fires in official institutions gradually acquires of a dangerous trend. So, already in the new year 2020, there was a fire in the premises of the Ministry of Culture of Youth and Sports of Ukraine, which happened on the morning of Januray 27.
According to the Emergency Situations Service, in the premises of the state body there was a strong smoke in the corridors of the third floor and a local fire in the basement. No one was injured.
The reasons of the fire could be a short circuit in the wires of the power supply network. However, two days after the fire, no information on identifying the perpetrators or on the start of an internal official investigation on the website of the state agency did not appear. Nor is it reported exactly which archival files were losted forever in the fire.
The irony of fate, is that the fire occurred in the archives of the Ministry, which means that it is actually responsible for the proper storage of archival documents throughout the country.
Ancient history
The tradition to set fire to “unprofitable” information actually appeared in our capital for a long time. The first case of such a “sudden” fires was a fire in the Kyiv public library of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR “Vernadsky National Library”
Precious texts from the time of the Hetman “Zaporizhian Host” and
up to the middle of the twentieth century flared upon the night of May 24, 1964.
Then they accused the worker of the library, who was later recognizedas that he suffers from mental disorders. The court sentenced him to 5 years in prison.
The worker admit the cause of the burning a personal hate to the library’s leadership, highlighting a personal motive. However, instead of the final word in court, he recited his own poem: “The enemies of culture are free, only I was in prison …”.
The surviving books, among which were the works of Hrinchenko and Skovoroda, were finally transferred – St. George Church of the Vydubychi Monastery. unfortunatly, four years later, on November 26, 1968, Fire was there, it was not possible to save the books.
No evidence – no case
In 2016, not only books could burn in Kyiv, but entire court cases also, on the night of June 12 t, the premises of the Solomensky District Court caught fire. Without victims, but we cannot saying the same about the of the building – the judges were forced to temporarily move to the premises of the Shevchenko district.
According to the State Emergency Service, a fire broke out in the archive room of criminal cases, and the cause of the fire was a short circuit that occurred at three in the morning!
According to the fact behined the fire, the investigators opened criminal proceedings under part 2 of article 194 (Intentional destruction or damage to property) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
It was closed in December of the same year due to the fact that it was not possible to collect sufficient evidence to indict people in court and exhaust the possibility of obtaining them.
Recall, that the Solomensky District Court of Kyiv since 2015 considers cases of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. So, at the time of the fire, there were cases in the court’s archive on charges of Eduard Stavitsky, ex-Minister of Energy At that era.
In August of the same year, the ex-official’s lawyers filed a petition to close the criminal case against their client due to the lack of sufficient evidence from the investigation of their client’s guilt, and the politician went to Israel.
Monday 13th
Obviously that it’s not only Friday the 13th that can be unhappy, they know well in the Prosecutor’s Office of the Kyiv region. In particular, on Monday morning , August 13, 2018 the fire broke out in Prosecutor’s Office of the Kyiv.
According to the State Emergency service , the fire occurred around 17:00 and the premises of the institution’s archive were once again targeted.
However, this time the firefighters arrived in time, so they managed to avoid the spread of fire over a large area. A significant part of the documents remained intact.
