Sauna Owners Face Charges for Fatal Fire in Kuzbass

Not having time to recover from the shock of the deaths in the boarding school, the small town of Prokopyevsk in Kemerovo Oblast experienced a new tragedy. In a private sauna that burned down on the evening of January 31, rescuers found the bodies of five teenagers. The high school students were celebrating a birthday in the complex and could not escape from the suddenly arising fire trap. Several people are blamed for their deaths: the administrator and brothers—the owners of the establishment. The day before, in court where they were assigned preventive measures, the circumstances of that fateful evening were first announced, as well as details of the illegal establishment«s operation.

Who ran the burned establishment, how it remained invisible to inspections for many years, and why the party turned into a nightmare—in the material by NGS42.RU.

Triple Birthday

The fire on Kubanskaya Street in Prokopyevsk was not an ordinary event. Rescuers, fighting the fire, discovered in one of the halls of the two-story bath complex the bodies of five people in the pool and sauna, all teenagers.

The deceased were high school students from a local school and college students who were friends in one group. In the sauna, they were celebrating a triple birthday—two girls and a boy were turning 16–17 years old. The birthday celebrants and their friends were allowed into the bath without adults, and after 2.5 hours they suffocated from carbon monoxide from the started fire.

There could have been more victims of the flames, but one of the schoolgirls managed to escape from the hall enveloped in acrid and deadly smoke. The employees of the burned bath were not harmed—the administrator and the cleaner who called the firefighters.

When rescuers arrived at the complex, everything inside was blazing, and soon part of the building collapsed. Why and where the fire started is still not known for sure, but there are many versions around another tragedy in Prokopyevsk.

The circumstances of that ill-fated evening, information about the work of the «killer sauna» and its owners became clear on February 2—at hearings on the selection of preventive measures for the figures in the criminal case.

Illegal History

The first to be handcuffed because of what happened was the bath administrator Elena Selishcheva. Investigators did not have to look for the woman: she met them at the still-blazing building.

On the day of the fire, it was she who let the group of teenagers in without adult accompaniment, added firewood to the fire, and ran out onto the street when the complex was covered in smoke.

Like the bath, Elena worked in Prokopyevsk illegally. She has 11 years of education and two small children, with whom she lives in Novokuznetsk.

Elena told an NGS42.RU correspondent that she was hired unofficially by the main owner—Alexey. No instructions, especially in case of fire, were given to her. Even fire extinguishers, which, if she is to be believed, were still in the building, no one from the staff really knew how to use.

Thoughts that someone might die in the complex never occurred to Selishcheva. According to her, the media write untruths about problems in the building: fires never happened in her memory. Moreover, Elena assures that there was no smell of burnt wiring before or on the day of the tragedy.

Selishcheva—the last one who saw the kids alive. As she described to the NGS42.RU editorial board, the whole tragedy unfolded in a matter of minutes, and she until the last thought that the underage visitors managed to get out into the fresh air.

She said that around 8:00 PM she went out into the corridor of the complex, where black clouds of smoke hit her in the face. Frightened, she ran into the sauna, called the teenagers to her, but only one of the girls, pressing a wet rag to her nose, dared to go into the acrid darkness.

Why the other teenagers stayed and jumped into the pool—she does not know, but in that direction there was another exit from the building.

— I flew into the administrative block, where the cleaner was sitting, and shouted to her: «Call the firefighters.» And it was already all black. The guys could have come out, survived, but they got scared. There was a lot of smoke,— recalls Elena.

The administrator is not sure that the fire started precisely from the sauna. She added wood and coal to the stove as usual, but did not monitor the temperature.

At the court hearing, Selishcheva stated that she did everything she could during the emergency and «saved the only surviving girl.» She cried almost the entire process, especially when the prosecutor and investigator talked about the detention center.

She did not admit guilt. In her opinion, she worked in the complex unofficially, is not registered anywhere in the papers, so she did not bear responsibility for fire safety. For all systems, fire extinguishers, and buttons, as she stated, the owner and his brother were personally responsible.

Family Business

The illegal hotel-bath, where teenagers were let in alone, was run by local entrepreneur Alexey Dolgachev. He bought a two-story building with an equipped sauna inside from auctions in 2020, renovated it, and started earning. But he never bothered to formalize the object according to the law, and hired all employees without documents.

Thus, for more than five years, the sauna operated invisibly to the tax service, Ministry of Emergency Situations (MChS), police, and other government services, while being known in the city. A paradox typical of Kuzbass. On online maps, dozens of reviews from visitors can be found, and on social networks, the establishment was positioned as a family complex. Every second frame from there—with groups of children and teenagers.

The entrepreneur was helped in organizing «a world where laughter and joy rule» by his close ones, in particular his own brother. The latter, according to staff testimony, took the role of manager and lived in the hotel himself. The owner also came to the makeshift bath daily: periodically received guests, repaired broken equipment, brought in new furniture.

As for fire safety, the brothers also dealt with it at a «slapdash» level. The evacuation scheme was drawn by hand and at random, certificates for fire extinguishers were mysteriously lost, and whether the alarm buttons and smoke detection systems worked, no one knew.

But precisely on the day when the fire occurred in the building, the families of the dealers were not there, they were not found in the city either. The owner, as it later turned out, was in Novosibirsk, and his brother—on vacation in Sochi. They allegedly learned about the death of the teenagers from the news and immediately set off for their small homeland.

Law enforcement officers, having detained the administrator, declared the owners wanted, but did not have to look for them. Dolgachev came to the Investigative Committee himself the next day, and his brother reported his flight to Kemerovo by phone.

During interrogations, they did not deny the illegal status of the sauna and a whole heap of violations discovered by investigators in the building after the fire. Moreover, their lawyer stated that the entrepreneurs «did not shirk responsibility» for the death of five teenagers.

But the orders in the sauna, according to them, they built differently, not those described by the employees. Dolgachev repeatedly forbade administrators to let teenagers in without adults, personally conveyed fire behavior rules to everyone, and allegedly always kept evacuation exits open.

At the hearing on the selection of preventive measures, Dolgachev was very nervous, hid his face from journalists« cameras, but was not against their presence at the process.

In court, he noted that in Prokopyevsk he has a wife and two small children—they are ready to move to Kemerovo, where the investigation into the case is being conducted. For this, his wife rented an apartment in the capital in case the entrepreneur is placed under house arrest. But, according to an NGS42.RU source, the family fled also out of fear of reprisal.

After what happened, Dolgachev«s relatives were allegedly threatened repeatedly, and attempts were made to set fire to the closed complex building.

What Next?

In court, the investigation insisted that the administrator and owner at large could collude—destroy surveillance video records, pressure witnesses, or flee. Some witnesses, as was stated in court, are even financially dependent on the businessman. For this reason, the prosecution asked to send Elena and Alexey to a pre-trial detention center (SIZO), but the court only partially granted this request.

Selishcheva was assigned house arrest—from the decision she burst into tears in the courtroom, her boss was not so lucky: he will at least be in isolation until March 31. In the coming days, a hearing is expected for the entrepreneur«s brother who flew in from Sochi.

Meanwhile, the families of the five schoolchildren are preparing for funerals: the bodies of the teenagers, who could not escape from the fire trap, according to NGS42.RU, will be buried in their hometown.

We express our condolences to the families of the deceased. We continue to follow the progress of the criminal case in a special story.