A man who escaped one fire has died after being unable to flee a separate blaze only two days later, according to Russian state media.
The unidentified man, who lived in the city of Saratov in southwestern Russia, managed to escape a fire in his fourth-floor apartment on January 23, but died in another fire on January 25, according to Russian broadcaster RTVI.
"As a result of the emergency, a man born in 1973 died," RTVI said, citing the regional Ministry of Emergency Situations, and adding that it is thought that a cigarette is believed to have started the fire.
In the fire on January 23, a mattress in the man's home was set alight, but he managed to flee to safety. It is unclear if he was injured in this incident.
A stock image shows an apartment fire in an unknown location. A man who escaped one fire has died after being unable to flee a separate blaze only two days later, according to Russian state... A stock image shows an apartment fire in an unknown location. A man who escaped one fire has died after being unable to flee a separate blaze only two days later, according to Russian state media. More GETTY
Authorities have not confirmed if he died in the same location where the first fire took place or somewhere else.
"A forensic medical examination has been ordered to establish the exact cause of the man's death," RTVI said.
Newsweek attempted to contact the Saratov Federation Council for comment via phone call on January 26 but received no answer.
A report by Newsweek found that a record number of industrial fires engulfed Russia last year, according to data from Molfar, an open source intelligence agency in Ukraine.
The number of such fires in Russia in 2023 more than doubled from the previous year, based on analysis of media reports about blazes in factories, shopping centers, military and logistics centers, warehouses and oil storage facilities.
There were 939 such fires in Russia in 2023, compared with 416 in 2022, meaning that the number of these type of blazes in the country increased by 125.7 percent last year compared with the previous year, Molfar found.
Molfar noted that there was also a 24.5 percent increase in fires in 2022—the year Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began—compared with 2021.
Many of these fires are unexplained, and Kremlin and local officials rarely make public statements on the blazes and their causes, although the finger of blame is sometimes pointed at partisans or Ukrainian "saboteurs." Kyiv rarely claims responsibility for incidents on Russian soil.
Firefighter shortages have also been reported. Yekaterinburg-based news site Ura.ru reported civil defense specialist Oleg Bazhanov as saying: "The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations lacks more than 20,000 firefighters."
He went on to say that in addition to a lack of personnel, there were also problems with fuel, uniforms, aircraft used in firefighting and search and rescue units.