Tatarstan children return from burnt-down health camp in Anapa to Kazan

Last night, the 560 children who were in Vitiazevo camp that burned down on 11 August in Anapa returned to Kazan by train.

The relatives of children waiting on the platform talked to each other. “A youth leader calmed me, said everything was OK,” a woman shared. “She told me everything calmly. We are happy all has ended well.”

As soon as the train arrived, all the people waiting for their relatives rushed to the carriages.

“My first reaction was – what happened? I ran outside barefoot and saw smoke coming out of the window, everybody said there was fire,” one of the boys who arrived shared.

“As we entered the building, they started screaming ‘fire’. We thought at first they were joking. Then we were taken aside and we saw smoke coming out of the first floor,” a girl who had been in Vitiazevo added. “They took us to the dance floor and counted. Then they took us to the football field. Then a bus came and we were taken to a camp. It was great there, they received us really well. The leaders stayed with us, played with us – it was really great.”

“Everybody was crying, running around, we were catching them,” Margarita Temnikova, who accompanied the children, said. “The children did not see the fire itself. Until the last moment we thought it would be extinguished but it spread from one room onto the entire building, it all burnt down.”

When the fire broke out on the night of 11 August, many children were at a disco, few remaining in the building that caught fire. All of them were the first to be evacuated. Before the rescuers arrived to the scene, camp’s staff and male teachers, assisted by senior teens, worked at the place where the fire started.

Despite all efforts, building’s first and second floors burnt down, the fire destroying children’s personal effects and documents. The children were later given all necessary certificates and provided by Kradnodar region authorities with items necessary to travel back home.

“To avoid panic, we asked the children not to call their parents. We did not forbid, we asked, because one girl started calling with such yelling, another got so scared, she fainted,” senior youth leader Olga Konstantinova shared.

Over 700 children came to Kazan from Anapa, 560 of them being from Tatarstan. The children spent the entire shift in Anapa and returned home together, on the same train that had taken them to the south.