The celebration of the Lame Horse nightclub's anniversary ended in tragedy. Out of nearly 300 guests, 113 have died, and some who could have been there, escaped death by a miracle. There were some who had been planning to go, but were prevented at the last minute because of a spouse's illness, others couldn't get tickets, and others left the club shortly before the fire started.
Prophetic song
Perm's residents heard about the celebrations planned a week before the Lame Horse's eighth anniversary. The organizers had planned three days of celebrations, on December 3, 4 and 5, and had sold 285 tickets for the fireworks show planned for 1 a.m. on Saturday.
The group that was to perform that night, Chocolate Victoria, did not get their paperwork done in time and had to cancel the performance, life.ru reported.
"Our group performed in the club a year ago," said the group's lead singer, Sergei Khizhnyak. "We liked its atmosphere, and we were supposed to be there the night of the tragedy. But God saved us."
Khizhnyak, who has recently moved from Perm to Moscow, composed a song especially for the club's celebrations. There was a phrase in it, "Life is not over, the horse gallops on bathed in flecks of light."
"Nobody thought the fireworks would end so tragically," Khizhnyak said. "When I composed the song, I thought about starlight, but we are not the masters of our fate."
The Lame Horse club had often put on firework displays, but organizers excelled themselves on the night of the tragedy. Even as the fire spread along the club's ceiling, nobody believed it was real fire, business daily Kommersant reports.
The video recorded by Alexander Popov, a cameraman with the local Uralinform TV station, shows people clearly under the impression that the fire was part of the show. "Ladies and gentlemen, to the club's jubilee!" the smiling host shouts, before shrieking several moments later, "There is a fire, leave the premises!" The tape shows the room already filled with smoke.
"We were sorry to miss our performance in Perm," Khizhnyak said. "But now we thank our lucky stars we escaped that fiery hell. I still shudder at the scale of the tragedy: over a hundred people dead."
The musician said he had phoned all his friends who were regulars at that club as soon as he heard about the tragedy. Happily, they were not there that night.
Carried outside
"I learned today that an incredible number of people did not go to Lame Horse that night because their spouse was ill, or because they missed a flight, or for some other reason," Nikita Belykh, governor of the Kirov Region and former deputy governor of the Perm Territory, wrote in his diary.
He wrote that one of his friends, Viktor Suetin, a member of the Perm territorial legislature, miraculously escaped death that night. He "entered the club 10 minutes before the fireworks were about to start and was near the doors when the fire began. The crowd simply carried him outside, and he later helped save people from the fire. He told me about this at five in the morning Perm time, when I was trying to establish the victims' names," Belykh writes.
Incredible luck
Irina, a graduate of Perm State University, would have been in the club if not for her father, who banned her ever going there.
Her diary reads: "Last time I was in the club was last summer, after which my dad expressly prohibited me from going there. He said I should think about my reputation. Although it is Dad's favorite club, it's a not a very savory place."
Irina said her father left the club 20 minutes before the fire.
"I was sitting with friends in a cafe when one of the guys got a call from his dad asking him where he was. 'There has been an explosion at the Horse,' the boy's father said. 'I don't know what happened but people have died.' I immediately phoned my dad. I called him three times and he did not answer. When he answered the fourth call, he said he was in a taxi going home. Where from? I asked. 'From the Horse,' he said. It was incredible luck, as he usually stays there as long as he can, and never leaves until four in the morning."
No tickets
"Just think, my mum could have been there that night," writes Pa Go in the LiveJournal. "But her man did not manage to get tickets in time. And one of my mum's friends changed his mind just before going into the club and decided to go somewhere else. My wife was a regular at the club, when she was a dancer, but she stopped going there after we met. And also, I could have been hired to work at that corporate party."
Not all Perm residents have learnt from the tragedy.
"You won't believe it, but I still see people lighting fireworks even now in the courtyard," writes a user.
Relieved
Lessons in Perm's high schools began with a moment of silence. Some only heard about the tragedy from their classmates.
"One of the girls called her friend who worked as a waitress at Lame Horse. It turned out she had a night off that night and it was sheer chance she lived," writes poduska.
"We love Perm's nightclubs but have never been to Lame Horse, although we planned to go there for a retro party, which they say are really cool. But then, it doesn't matter to us where we kill time. [What happened at Lame Horse] could happen anywhere to anyone," writes a LiveJournal user.
***
Prepared by rian.ru using information from RIA Novosti and taken from open sources.
