Heating pipe bursts in Russian hotel, boiling water kills 5

MOSCOW – A heating pipe burst Monday in a small Russian hotel, flooding rooms with boiling water that killed five people and left six others injured in the central city of Perm, emergency officials said.

The nine-room hotel was located in the basement of a residential building in the city of 1 million people near Russia’s Ural Mountains. All of the victims — who included a child — were staying at the hotel, authorities said. Three of the injured were hospitalized with burns.

Russian police have opened a probe into the tragedy.

The plumbing explosion left 20 buildings, including a hospital, a school and a kindergarten, without heat or hot water in the middle of winter, local authorities said.

Russian lawmaker Oleg Melnichenko said, given the deaths, the Russian parliament might consider a ban on having hotels or hostels in the basements of residential buildings.

“Hostels shouldn’t be open in basements, where all pipelines are located,” Melnichenko said.

Last year the Russian parliament banned opening hostels or hotel rooms in apartments in residential buildings.