Ruins of collapsed 5-story apartment building being cleaned up in Karaganda

Ruins of the 5-story apartment building that collapsed in Bessoba region are being cleaned up in Karaganda, KazTAG reports citing oblast Emergency Situations Department. “We started cleaning up the ruins at 9:00 a.m. on April 7. Elimination of the accident involves 17 groups: 207 people and 50 vehicles,” the Department’s message states. According to the action plan, the ruins are cleaned up by Aspap company, municipal organizations and several units from the oblast's Emergency Situations Department. To start the cleaning process, the experts had to prepare a special site for the vehicles. According to the authority, 40 residents of the safe section No.1 of the building were evacuated as an precaution. “ Management of the oblast's Emergency Situations Department created a commission to investigate into causes of the accident. The commission includes representatives of all the involved state authorities. The Department is currently dealing with accommodation for the victims or compensation for their losses,” the message states. Photo courtesy of ekaraganda.kz Special Prosecutor of Karaganda initiated a case on the building's collapse under the article 307, part 4 of Kazakhstan Criminal Code, i.e. misuse of authorities. The criminal case was initiated against the chairman and the members of the state acceptance commission, who signed the 124-apartment building into exploitation in June 2009. Servispromsnab was the general contractor of the building. The 4-entrance section of the 5-storied residential building in Bessoba region of Karaganda collapsed on Friday at 10:55 a.m. No casualties were reported. People lost their properties under the ruins. Photo by Aleksandr Yermolenok© Starting with a small crack the inadmissible deviation of the building's corners reached 720 mm between April 1 and April 5. 138 people were evacuated from the building. A state of emergency was announced in the building on April 3. The 124-apartment residential building, constructed as an equity construction project, was 80 percent occupied. 35 apartments of this building were bought by the state to award them to socially-protected people. Photo courtesy of ekaraganda.kz Meanwhile, financial police is investigating the criminal case on fraud against the director of Servispromsnab Andrey Malyanov. He has been on the international wanted list since last summer. His company is over 300 million tenge ($2 million) in debt to banks on loan repayments.