The bodies of Moscow schoolchildren who died in Karelia were brought to the Ramenskoye airfield near Moscow. The identification procedure will take place today at the capital's forensic medical examination bureau. According to the head of Karelia, 13 children died, and another child is still considered missing. The search for him resumed today.
This tragedy in Karelia forced the government to hold a meeting on the safety of children's recreation. Although until this day, for three years no one paid attention to the fact that this camp had turned into survival courses for children with minimal security measures.
The schoolchildren set sail in a powerful storm that came from the Baltic states and St. Petersburg. A former camp counselor told reporters REN TV, that before the administration simply disowned all warnings. Children were even forced to jump overboard during such storms.
Syamozero has a bad reputation among local residents. The weather changes quickly here and big waves rise. Every year, fishermen and tourists die in the reservoir.
“We sailed to Snake Island, everything was fine, and then a storm of 4 meters began, we were carried back and forth, and we could not move. We lost 3 oars, dropped them from our hands, the waves were right on us, our clothes got wet, and we We’ve already given up, our instructors said there’s nowhere to go, and by evening we’ll be washed away on the island,”– said the camp pupils.
The fact that the tragedy had occurred became known only the next day. One of the girls was thrown ashore, she walked several kilometers to the nearest village and told the adults that their boat had been overturned by a wave. Only then did the rescue operation begin.
“I walked through, found a girl, climbed into the water, pulled out the already dead one, then walked on again... I found another child, a boy or a girl, but after two attempts I couldn’t get it, the wave was big,”– said Vladimir Erofeev, a worker at the Syamozero camp.
Rescuers found the bodies of 13 people. The search for another one resumed in the morning. The rest managed to escape. They were able to swim to the island on their own and, hungry, tired and wet, waited out the bad weather.
"The camp management did not track or check this route. Time was wasted. If all this had happened in a timely manner, even after the overturn, the Ministry of Emergency Situations had responded in a timely manner, we would have saved almost all of the guys. About 16 years passed from the moment of the tragedy until the first call hours, even 20",– said the rescuers.
To go out on such water with children, you need to have considerable experience, said former camp instructor Kirill Dyatlov. But they recruited students for shifts and sent them to look after the children without any instructions. They were paid a little more than in other camps, so there was a line of people willing to work.
“It seems to them that they can and know everything, and they know how to swim, but no one explained how to pull out drowning people. Keep an eye on all the children, they think that the kids are already tired, that they can be left, that they are all on their own they can handle it, they can do everything themselves", - said the instructor.
Safety in the camp had always been in last place. Counselors who worked at the camp in previous shifts say that there have been cases of children drowning during storms before, and last year a child broke his spine when he fell from a climbing wall - the safety rope was frayed. And in general, children were treated carelessly. They often fed us spoiled food and laid out wet bed linen. More than once, the camp management was fined, and in 2012, the camp’s deputy director was tried for the murder of a guard. Nevertheless, the Syamozero Park Hotel regularly won multimillion-dollar competitions of the Moscow Social Security Department.
“In addition to the stationary one, where there were 150 children, there was also an illegal tent camp organized there, where there were another 100 children. So, the children from the tent camp went on this hike yesterday,”– said the Governor of the Republic of Karelia Alexander Khudilainen.
14 of the children were registered in the camp, the identity of another child is being established. According to preliminary data, he lived in the detachment without documents - this was often practiced in this camp. The rescued camp students spent that night in Petrozavodsk in the barracks of the cadet corps - officials decided to end their shift ahead of time and return the children home. The authorities of Karelia announced the payment of one million rubles to the relatives of the victims.
The tragedy in the Karelian camp forced the authorities to pay attention to organizing children's recreation. Inspections of summer health facilities across the country have begun. What caused the mass death of teenagers on Syamozero remains to be determined by investigators. There are already the first suspects. Incidents like the current one, fortunately, do not happen often in Russia. Dni.Ru remembered the most resonant emergencies in children's camps.
Happened on Saturday, June 18th. As it turned out, a tour group of 49 people, including mostly children aged 11–15, went out onto the lake on those boats. At the same time, the camp management knew about the storm warning. As a result of gusts of wind, one of the boats capsized. The emergency occurred near the islands scattered around the lake. It was to them that the children caught in the icy water were trying to get to them. As a result, 11 teenagers were able to swim to the islands. According to the latest data, 13 children became victims of the tragedy, one child went missing.
ON THE TOPIC
This incident at the health camp, unfortunately, is not an isolated incident. The Krasnodar region immediately comes to mind. There, in 2010, five children and a teacher from the Azov camp drowned. The children were students of Moscow school No. 1065. The group, which included about 100 children aged eight to 15 years and seven teachers, went on an excursion to the island. According to the investigation, schoolchildren were allowed to swim without ensuring that it was safe. According to some reports, the teachers organized a picnic: empty beer cans were found there, and alcohol was found in the blood of three mentors.
In June 2015, a 12-year-old schoolboy drowned in the Dolphin indoor pool while he was in a children's camp at the Armkhi health-improving complex in Ingushetia. In July of the same year, a 12-year-old boarding school student who was vacationing at the Solnechny children's camp in the Krasnoyarsk Territory drowned. A similar emergency occurred in the Voronezh region, where a 13-year-old teenager drowned in the river due to the unskilled actions of a teacher. And in the “Clean Keys” camp in the Saratov region, teachers did not notice how a 12-year-old boy drowned. He swam with the rest of the guys, but the water was so cloudy that no one simply saw him go under the water.
Staff negligence led to a tragedy in the Parus camp near Chita: a ten-year-old girl died there in an accident in 2010. The accident happened after horse riding lessons. The children, without an instructor, ran up to the horse on which the young rider was sitting. The animal was frightened by the screams and reared up. The child in the saddle fell on his side, entangled in the stirrup. The horse then hit the hanging girl in the head with its hoof.
Regularly, like reports from the fronts, they come during rest. There are up to several dozen such incidents per year. Thus, in 2015, at the Sputnik children's camp in the Rostov region, about 200 people were hospitalized. The main cause of illness is considered to be poor-quality products, as well as violation of the rules of storage and preparation of food. In the same Rostov region, salmonellosis caused the poisoning of 50 people, including 43 children in a kindergarten.
From time to time, other incidents occur in the camps, which, although not fatal, cause justifiable public indignation. In 2010, two 15-year-old pupils of the New Generation labor camp, who were stealing strawberries from a field at night, were beaten by guards and hospitalized with traumatic brain injuries. There were several other guys with them, but they managed to escape, and the girls fell into the hands of the guards. Already during the investigation into the incident, it turned out that the camp was designed for 135 children, and 200 lived there, control over them was poor, so night trips for strawberries were in the order of things.
Over the past year, the families of the dead children have not been able to recover from the tragedy.
The tragedy in Karelia occurred on June 18, 2016. 47 children, who arrived at the beginning of the month to relax at the camp of the Park Hotel Syamozero LLC, accompanied by four adults, went on a hike on the lake on a raft and two tourist canoes. Due to the increased wind and the onset of a storm, waves of a meter in height formed on the lake, As a result, both canoes capsized, killing 14 schoolchildren, including a disabled child.
The first to come to the aid of children in trouble were employees of the tourist complex of the village of Kudama, which is located not far from the site of the tragedy. As the owner of the camp site, Nikolai Stolyarov, said, at about eight in the morning on June 19, Elena Reshetova, director of the Syamozero Park Hotel LLC, called him.
“She called and said that the children were missing, the group was not in touch and asked to go and see where they were and find out why they were not getting in touch. I saw that the waves on the lake were strong, I turned to the employees - Volodya and Andrey - and asked them to get on a large boat, look for the children. They went into the lake, and I walked along the shore and literally after 100 meters I began to find slippers and oars and realized that everything was not very good,” Stolyarov said.
All the village residents went out in search of the children that day. According to huntsman Andrei Severikov, the search for children began first on the islands. “They found five people on the first island, then they found another girl on the next island, then three living and one dead boy, and two more girls. They brought 11 living people ashore,” he recalls.
Vladimir Dorofeev, who at that time was walking along the shore of one of the islands, discovered only the dead. “I took one girl out of the water, covered her with cellophane so that her eyes wouldn’t peck, and threw a vest over her. Then I found the boy’s body, which was stuck in the reeds, I tried to get it out three times, but I couldn’t because of the strong wave. I went to search further and about one and a half to two kilometers later, the Ministry of Emergency Situations officers came out to meet me. I showed them where the children were and returned to the base,” Dorofeev said.
The surviving children were first taken to one of the tourist bases. Here they were taken care of by the administrator of the camp site, Tatyana Kustysheva, together with colleagues Natalya Stolyarova and Anna Nikitina. The women immediately took the children to the bathhouse to warm up. “One girl said that she spent the night in the forest alone, slept on branches, covered herself with branches. Many had their legs scratched on the rocky bottom. They had practically no clothes,” recalls Tatyana.
Rescuers received information about the emergency at 11:15 on June 19 from residents of the village of Kudama. The girl Yulia Korol, who survived the storm, managed to get to them and told about what had happened. As Sergei Shugaev, head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia for Karelia, told TASS, rescue units immediately went to the scene of the tragedy. But it was already too late.
Shugaev emphasized that the organizers of the trip were notified of the storm warning, but did not return to the camp. It is known that the organizers of the campaign kept in touch with each other: they called on mobile phones. But they did not report the incident to emergency services.
“If we had received this information on June 18, then we would have saved 10-12 of the 14 children,” Shugaev said.
The surviving children found on the islands were promptly evacuated to the shore by boats of local residents, ships of the State Inspectorate for Small Boats and boats of the Karelian Republican Search and Rescue Service. When they started checking the lists, it turned out that one child was missing. Rescuers still had hope that he managed to survive. An extensive search began on the water, on the shore, and the scene of the tragedy was examined from the air. A total of 350 people were looking for the boy, including 42 divers; 29 watercraft and three helicopters and Falcon submersibles were involved.
“Somewhere on the third day we realized that, unfortunately, he probably drowned. On June 27, the boy’s body was discovered,” Shugaev said.
Moscow schoolgirl Yulia Korol showed real courage and bravery during that terrible tragedy. The girl, who was part of the group that went on a hike, not only managed to survive, but also saved several people during the storm. She reached the village of Kudama and reported the trouble that had happened.
As her grandmother, Galina Goncharova, said, the family’s life has not changed much over the past year.
“It’s very difficult for her (Yulia - editor’s note) to remember these events. A psychologist worked with her at school. They start asking her questions about this - she starts crying. But now it’s better,” she said.
Despite the tragic events, according to her grandmother, Yulia did not begin to be afraid of water. “Now she is resting in Artek. She and her brother swim and bathe together. She has not developed any fear of water,” Goncharova explained.
According to her, the granddaughter believes that she did not perform any feat that day, and says that everyone would have done the same.
The grandmother believes that the medal “For saving the dead,” which was awarded to Yulia Korol by the head of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, Vladimir Puchkov, can predetermine her future profession: Yulia can connect her fate with the rescue service.
Parents whose children died during the storm on Syamozero are still grieving over what happened. As the representative of several victims, lawyer Lyudmila Evstifeeva, told TASS, the fate of many of them was tragic.
“Imagine, parents presented their children for identification. It’s still hard for people,” she said.
According to the lawyer, one woman’s heart gave out and she died of a heart attack. Another could not bear the death of her child and is still under observation in a psychiatric hospital. And these are not the only family tragedies that have occurred over the past year.
The camp itself in the village of Syargilakhta was closed after the tragedy by a court decision, and the students went home. All buildings were closed, the entrance was sealed. Now, even a year later, there is silence here, only a security guard looks after the territory. The camp property, along with the land plot, is planned to be put up for sale this year.
After the tragedy on Syamozero, the Investigative Committee opened several criminal cases, but to date only one has reached the court. The court found the first person guilty of the death of the children to be 46-year-old Irina Shcherbakova, a paramedic at the Suojärvi district hospital, who mistook a call for help from a drowning boy as a joke. She was sentenced to three years in a penal colony with a deferred sentence until her daughter reaches 14 years of age.
The defendants in another case are six people: director of Park Hotel Syamozero LLC Elena Reshetova, ex-head of the camp Vadim Vinogradov, former instructors Valery Krupoderschikov and Pavel Ilyin, ex-head of the Karelian department of Rospotrebnadzor Anatoly Kovalenko and acting head of the department Lyudmila Kotovich. They are currently familiarizing themselves with the materials of the case, which totals 125 volumes and contains more than 30 thousand pages. Vinogradov and Reshetova are under arrest, the rest are at large.
According to investigators, Reshetova, Vinogradov, instructors Krupoderschikov and Ilyin did not cancel the water trip, knowing about the storm warning in most regions of Karelia. One of the boats the children were on had a malfunction and was overloaded, but this also did not stop the camp management. In addition, the staff did not provide life jackets to the children. suitable size. Also, the investigation believes, Reshetova, Vinogradov and Krupoderschikov deliberately did not report the incident to emergency services.
The investigation sees Kovalenko and Kotovich at fault in the fact that a year before the tragedy they knew about numerous violations of the law committed by the head of Syamozero Park Hotel LLC, but allowed the camp to open in 2016.
On Saturday, two boats with children capsized on the Karelian Syamozero summer camp. Of the 26 people sitting in the canoe, 14 children and one “adult” - a minor instructor - died. The surviving teenagers were sent by the Ministry of Emergency Situations to Petrozavodsk, some of them were hospitalized. The camp owners explain that a sudden storm is to blame for the tragedy. The official representative of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Vladimir Markin, rushes to conclusions: the instructors were only thinking about saving their lives. The local population defends the students who accompanied the groups and demands that the organizers of the children's holiday be punished.
A post made by the official representative of the Russian Investigative Committee, Vladimir Markin, on Twitter, finished off the residents of Karelia: “The instructors were thinking about saving their own “skin.” How could anyone trust such children with their lives?”
“Yes, they are children themselves. The deceased instructor is under 18. I saw the escorts. Small, thin. They look like high school students. Students from Petrozavodsk University and Pedagogical College were sent with the teenagers. What could they do? Just put life jackets on all children. Put it on. We found dead children in them. The children did not drown, they froze in the water,” explains “ Novaya Gazeta» head of Essoil rural settlement Andrey Orekhanov. “I’m afraid that half-grown instructors will be blamed for everything and students will be turned into extremes.” Who sent them out on a canoe in such weather? The canoes are nimble, the lake is scary, the storm begins abruptly. What was the need to let go of a group where the youngest were 11 years old, two were 15, and the rest were 13? The organizers are to blame, but they will get away with it again, as has happened more than once.”
According to eyewitnesses, the trip involved a raft and two boats. Shortly before the disaster, they went in different directions: the raft was not far from the shore, the canoe was 2-3 kilometers away. Everything happened quickly: the wind rose, the waves capsized the boats, the children fell into the icy water...
They started looking for them in the morning, 19 hours later.
Residents of Kudama (the nearest village) Vladimir Dorofeev and Andrey Severikov, when dawn broke, went by boat to inspect the islands.
“As soon as we heard about the emergency, we got ready. We couldn’t sit and wait for the Ministry of Emergency Situations,” says Natalya Stolyarova from Kudama. - Vova Dorofeev found several guys. And Andrey discovered the sleeping teenagers. Wet, numb. They did not give any signals, they did not try to get fire. We slept under plastic. City kids, unprepared. There are 11 people in total. The men brought them to the village. We immediately heated the bathhouse, warmed the children, and fed them hot soup. The Ministry of Emergency Situations and doctors appeared later. The teenagers were not silent and did not withdraw. They apparently didn’t fully understand what happened.”
A camp of ill repute
The head of the tourism department of the Ministry of Culture of Karelia, Ekaterina Biktimirova, says that the dead children were vacationing at the summer camp of the Syamozero park hotel. He has a bad reputation in the republic. There, according to Biktimirova, “there is both crime and chaos.” The local population did not send their children to the camp, but Moscow and the Moscow region sent them. And mostly teenagers from low-income families and orphanages. According to the Prosecutor's Office of Karelia, in 2016 the Department of Labor and social protection of the population of Moscow signed a contract with the park hotel for 46 million rubles, in 2015 - three similar contracts for a total amount of 43 million rubles. In just five recent years 19 contracts worth more than 146 million rubles were signed.
“Last year, when we had another conflict with Syamozer, it was your Moscow children from orphanages who were in torn and wet tents. And today on the list of victims are Muscovites from low-income families. And the vouchers are not cheap - they cost 23-24 thousand rubles. All four shifts are full, places have been paid for until the end of summer,” says the head of the Essoil rural settlement, Andrei Orekhanov. - I don’t know where adults are looking. A year ago, I received a complaint from villagers - a park hotel had built a tent camp and blocked the road to the public beach. When I arrive, the children are wet, hungry, and the tents are full of holes. I wanted to meet with the camp management, but they kicked me out. The certificate of the head of administration did not work. I contacted the district authorities, a commission arrived, including the FSB and the prosecutor's office. Violations were found and the children were removed from the camp. And this year there are changes again. Why didn't they close it? Don't know. For several years, parents complained about Syamozero. I’ve been working in the administration for seven years, and that’s about how long I’ve been fighting with the camp.”
The head of the Pryazhinsky district administration, Oleg Ermolaev, refuses to discuss how a camp with a bad reputation has withstood inspections year after year: “I have no time to answer questions. All information is on the website of the Republican Ministry of Emergency Situations.”
On the website of the Ministry of Emergency Situations there is information about those killed on Syamozero, but not about the numerous complaints from residents of Petrozavodsk. A year ago, immediately after the opening of the camp, the camp leaders took the children on a two-day hike - with rafting and overnight stays in the forest, without preparation or instructions. Young student interns worked with teenagers then, as now. Doctors visited the camp once a week. Naughty, difficult children from the park hotel were exiled to the island, to the forest. There were escapes, after which the pupils were found very late in temporary detention centers.
Residents of the Pryazhinsky district assume that the owners of the camp had influential defenders, otherwise it would have been closed long ago. What if even the checks of the FSB and the prosecutor's office yielded nothing? Or were the checks “just for the sake of form”?
appeal from a student at Petrozavodsk Pedagogical College
“Everyone knows the tragedy that happened in the Pryazhinsky district on Syamozero. Children died. Our classmate Lyudmila Vasilyeva, a student at Petrozavodsk Pedagogical College, was also there. She is a 3rd year student majoring in Teaching in primary school" Like us, she did an internship.
It’s important to know that we did our internship at the camp under the threat of expulsion. We were told by Natalya Valerievna Sheveleva, I quote: “If for any reason you leave the camp, even if it is an emergency, I will raise the issue of your expulsion.”
The girls went to the camp without any training, had not previously worked at the camp and had not completed any training courses to become instructors.<…>
After the first shift left, we received messages every day about various incidents and that the leadership was not in the camp. For all the children, and there are more than 300 of them, there is one doctor who does not have any medications.
We went to the camp as counselors. According to the contract documents? We were actually curators, but for some reason we became instructors, although we do not have the appropriate education. We don’t know how to drive boats, we don’t know how to survive in field conditions and in extreme situations. As we have been told, we must ensure that children are rested and occupied throughout the day. Every day there were emergencies, but the management turned a blind eye and shifted all the blame onto the students.
All responsibility lies on the shoulders of E. Reshetova and V. Vinogradov, who put pressure on the students, threatening to fire them.
We want everyone to know the truth. These people will do anything to avoid responsibility."
Now the head of Karelia, Alexander Khudilainen, reports at a meeting with the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Vladimir Puchkov, that the regional authorities will decide the issue of “the feasibility of the existence of the camp.”
What does he call a camp? As it turns out, the group that participated in the last rafting was not even registered with the Ministry of Emergency Situations. “Based on this fact alone, one can judge that its organization was disgusting,” said Vasily De, an experienced survival course instructor and coordinator for working with volunteers of the Red Cross Volunteers search and rescue team. “It is unlikely that the group accidentally “flew” into a storm with the current level of technology.”
P.S.
On Sunday in Karelia, the director of the park-hotel Elena Reshetova and her deputy Vadim Vinogradov, instructors Regina Ivanova and Lyudmila Vasilyeva were detained. A criminal case has been opened.
Today marks exactly one year since the tragedy on the Karelian Syamozero. June 18, 2016 from children's camp“Park Hotel Syamozero” a group of children under the guidance of instructors went on a water trip. A storm broke out on the lake, the boats capsized, and 14 children died. The first rescuers were residents of the village of Kudama. Thanks to them, an even greater tragedy was avoided. A year later, they remember the tragic events and do everything possible to preserve the memory of the victims. The "" correspondent went to Kudama on the eve of the anniversary of the tragedy and talked with the people's heroes.
Kudama
Time flows calmly in Kudam: local residents dig in their gardens, children play in a puddle, sometimes someone rides a bicycle through the streets. And it’s as if that terrible tragedy didn’t happen here a year ago, as if these people didn’t take the cold bodies of children out of the water, as if they didn’t warm up those who survived the storm and swam ashore. But when you start communicating with people, you understand: the pain of June 18, 2016 is still alive, and all this regularity is just powder on top of a wound that is just beginning to heal.
Administrator of the recreation center “Quiet Lake” Tatyana Kustysheva flips through the pages in the guest book. Tatyana shows a couple of lines written a year ago:
“Thank you for the welcome! You helped us a lot, good luck in the prosperity of the cafe! With love, Karelia OPEN , 2nd squad."
This was written by children from the camp, says Tatyana. - We only noticed this modest recording after their departure.
On the morning of June 19, 2016, Tatyana, together with other base employees, literally saved children from cold and hunger. The men heated the bathhouse, the women prepared the food. The first eleven children who washed ashore were warmed up with brooms in the bathhouse and hot tea.
Someone's temperature immediately rose, one girl was simply burning with heat. Apparently, she was very cold, and after the bath the body reacted like this. After the bath, right in the administration building, we moved sofas and armchairs together, they all lay together and... cried.
At first, Tatyana talks about last year’s events somehow easily and simply. He says that at first it was scary to think about what happened, but now it’s easier to remember. And yet, with each new detail, the pauses in Tatyana’s speech become longer.
Tatyana Kustysheva Our forest is pine, but they walked barefoot, walking on needles. Then these needles were taken out of each other’s legs... One girl was all scratched up - she was thrown onto the island, in order not to freeze, she tore spruce branches and covered herself with them at night... Many were bruised. There were waves that day, and the shore here was rocky, it was so easy to catch on the stones, so they were pounding... And one girl, she cried the most. She told me that her parents sent her to this camp to distract her from the death of her grandfather. He drowned a month ago, and now she... It’s some kind of wild fate,” says Tatyana.
For saving children in last year's tragedy, Tatyana and four other employees of the base in Kudam received medals and certificates on June 15, 2017. The modest watchman Vladimir Dorofeev also received the medal “For saving the dead.” It was he who, on his morning walk around the base, found the children on the shore of the lake.
“I don’t like all these interviews of yours,” Vladimir begins our conversation. - Yes, and I don’t like to remember that day either.
Vladimir Dorofeev According to Vladimir, when he found the first five guys and found out that there were 19 people in the group, he realized that something terrible had happened.
First, they found five children with a boy instructor, then another girl on the island, then Andrei Severikov went to other islands,” says Vladimir. - And when we found their location, it turned out that this was not a location, but something in general that was not clear...
"Museum of Angels"
The tragedy at Syamozero really changed the life of quiet Kudama. The grief that the storm brought them on June 18 is still experienced by many to this day. Elena Yakunenkova did not participate in rescuing the survivors. Together with her neighbors, she pulled the bodies of the dead from the water.
The first girl we picked up had a blue rubber band in her hair, she was wearing a vest, and the rest were all without vests,” says Elena. - And one, the smallest boy, was wearing nothing but swimming trunks.
Elena remembers almost every detail on the bodies of the seven children that she pulled out of the water. He just doesn’t remember their faces. He says it was too hard to look at them. He remembers that everyone was taken out with the hope that at least someone was still breathing.
I take the first girl, and she is still tiny and warm, I shout that she may still be alive, but she is no longer... And when the rescuers arrived, we asked why they were all swimming on the surface, even without vests, and they told us because the water did not get into their lungs, they died from the cold.
Elena Yakunenkova Today Elena knows the names and faces of all 14 children who drowned in Syamozero. An entire “Museum of Angels” was dedicated to them in Kudam. On its walls are portraits of children, under the icon of the Mother of God are 14 figurines of angels, each with their own name. The villagers had the idea to open such a museum for a long time. But the tragedy pushed people to implement it faster. The owner of the very base where the children were warmed up, Nikolai Stolyarov, renovated the building of the former club, and people chipped in money for angel figures.
This destroyed building was there, there was nothing here, and this tragedy just happened. Since children are the same angels, it just so happened that the kids ended up here, says Nikolai Stolyarov.
We can say that we collected the exhibition of this unusual museum from the world, piece by piece. Some made free nameplates, some printed photographs, some donated frames for them. Elena Yakunenkova and her daughter were in charge of all the preparations. He says that in the future people want to set up a stand with children’s personal belongings, but this will be done with the help of the children’s parents. She communicates with many on social networks.
I think that parents will be pleased that we have such a museum where the memory of their children is preserved,” says Elena.
But it’s not just the “Museum of Angels” that reminds residents of the 2016 tragedy. Immediately after the sad events, a worship cross was erected on the shore of the lake. Again at your own expense. It’s surprising that people don’t expect any other help. To the questions - is it necessary? They say they won’t refuse, but they won’t ask either. And this despite the fact that representatives of the republican authorities themselves stated several times that on the anniversary of the tragedy a memorial sign would be installed on the shore of the lake. New leader region, Arthur Parfenchikov personally promised that by June 18, 2017, there would be a memorial on Syamozero. True, a few days before memorable date it is known that there will still be no sign. Apparently there was a need to discuss the future sign with the children’s relatives. It is unknown whether the parents themselves are ready for such a discussion.
Karelia Closed
The Syamozero Park Hotel or the Karelia Open camp today does not live up to its name. On the welcome sign are posted papers with orders to close the camp. On the gate is the security guard's phone number. According to the head of the local settlement, Andrei Orekhanov, no one is allowed into the territory, it is only known that all things are gradually removed from there.
Andrei Orekhanov speaks about the fate of the camp just as emotionally as he did a year ago: he has been pushing for the closure of this place for many years.
There have been many complaints about this camp. I have already told you that in 2015 I managed to close the camp by decision of an interdepartmental commission, but the court overturned this decision. After all, they seized the territory next to the camp and built houses and toilets there. We fought with the residents of Syargelakhty, but [camp director Elena] Reshetova called the police allegedly because of illegal entry into private territory. Now they have sorted it all out, but again they left the mess on the shore,” says Andrey Orekhanov.
Andrey Orekhanov There really is a mess. Former buildings seem to have been torn out from small foundations, and there is construction debris and dirt all around.
It’s hard to imagine that just a year ago life was in full swing here: children played “Robinson”, perhaps conquered the obstacle course put together next to the camp territory. And so abruptly this life ended. Just as the lives of fourteen children who went on a boat trip to Lake Syamozero a year ago were cut short.
What changed after the tragedy on Syamozero. Help "7x7"
Inspections and closure of children's camps
Immediately after the death of children on Syamozero, unscheduled inspections of children's camps began throughout the country. Several recreational places were closed at once, not only in, but also in others.
Before starting a new one summer season in Karelia, acting governor Artur Parfenchikov announced a “rigorous inspection” of vacation spots. As a result of inspections, the leadership of Rospotrebnadzor rejected several camps that had successfully passed inspections and had been operating for many years. Thus, in the vicinity of Petrozavodsk, three out of four municipal camps were unable to accommodate children. The Karelian Rospotrebnadzor refused to comment on what was happening, demanding that a written request be sent to the department. The editors of "" will receive and publish answers to questions about how many camps are closed, why they did not pass inspection this year and when a repeat study will be conducted.
Personnel decisions and criminal cases against officials
Three days after the tragedy, the court of the head of the Karelian Rospotrebnadzor department, Anatoly Kovalenko. He lost his position and became a defendant in a criminal case for negligence. His former deputy Lyudmila Kotovich, who received the position of acting director after Kovalenko’s arrest, is accused under the same article. Since May 2017, she has been under recognizance not to leave. their positions as director and deputy director of the Petrozavodsk Pedagogical College, sending students to practice at the Park-Hotel Syamozero camp.
The leadership of the republic did not make any other personnel decisions. and vacationing children demanded the resignation of the Karelian children's ombudsman Oksana Starshova, but she continues to work. Unlike her federal colleague Pavel Astakhov, who was forced to resign after a scandal related to his inappropriate behavior with injured children: while visiting the victims in the hospital, Astakhov asked one of the girls the question “Well, how was your swim?”
Information appeared in the media that deputies of the Legislative Assembly of Karelia intend to demand the resignation of Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Ulich, who then headed the interdepartmental commission on organizing summer holiday children, but she continued to work as part of the government of Alexander Khudilainen and resigned only after the change of the head of the region.
In the spring of 2017, Irina Shcherbakova, a paramedic at the Suojärvi District Hospital, was sentenced to three years in a penal colony with a deferred sentence for negligence. She took the call from drowning children as a joke and did not notify the rescue service about it. The father of the boy who called, who was present at the court hearing, did not consider the health worker guilty, and proposed to judge those who are responsible for the operation of emergency telephones in Karelia.
Now an investigation is underway against the management of the Park Hotel Syamozero camp - director Elena Reshetova and her deputy Vadim Vinogradov. Both were placed in pre-trial detention. One of the camp counselors, Valery Krupoderschikov, who accompanied the group of dead children, is under a written undertaking not to leave the place. He is under the same articles of the Criminal Code as Reshetova and Vinogradov - 125 (“Leaving in danger”) and 238 (“Providing services that do not meet safety requirements”).
Changes in legislation and public procurement system in the field of children's recreation
Two months after the tragedy, in August 2016, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a government order to exclude services for organizing children's recreation from the list of purchases through the electronic auction system. This means that now, when determining the company responsible for children's recreation, not only the price is taken into account (previously, the one who offered the lowest price at the auction won it and received a government contract), but also experience in organizing children's recreation, the qualifications of employees working with children, and real conditions placement of children.
The tragedy in Karelia showed the flaws in the electronic auction system: Syamozero LLC won government contracts not only because auctions were organized with the participation of shell companies close to the management of Syamozero, but also because it offered the lowest price. The price was reduced due to the use of free labor of student trainees, the organization of a camp “carousel” (when a group of children was taken on a hiking or boat trip, and the next batch of vacationers moved in in their place) and savings on infrastructure (not far from the camp where the children lived in brick houses, wooden temporary huts were built, which also housed groups of children).
The legislation has also changed: federal law“On the basic guarantees of children’s rights in the Russian Federation” amended Article 12 (“Ensuring the rights of children to rest and recreation”). It contained words about “improving the quality and safety of recreation” for children and about control by the authorities. A new article of the law (Article 12.1) instructs the Federal Ministry of Education and Science to develop a “model provision” and “ methodological recommendations» on organizing children's holidays. However, before the start of the 2017 summer season, the approximate regulations were not approved, nor did unified methodological recommendations appear.
Gleb and Anna Yarovoy, photo by Gleb Yarovoy, ""
