Dagestan: fire victims from Tsibari evacuated to nearby villages

Residents of the Dagestani village of Tsibari, where 80 houses out of 95 burnt down, were evacuated to nearby villages - Mamok and Shauri.

The "Caucasian Knot" was informed by Oleg Grekov, head of the press service of the Southern Regional Centre (SRC) of the Russian Ministry for Emergencies (MfE) that 90 persons were evacuated to Mamok, and 202 persons - to Shauri. 97 local males remained in the village, and, according to Mr Grekov, helped the MfE staff to suppress the fire.

Now, according to his story, "an accommodation centre and field kitchens have been deployed in the destroyed village. He added that the centre was organized in the local school - one of the few survived buildings. "People behave composedly and are responsive. The situation is complicated, but trustworthy. There is no panic, villagers reveal understanding," said Grekov.

However, an eyewitness of the tragedy reports from the venue that the situation in the village is not so simple. "People here don't usually reveal their emotions openly - this is the essence of the highland people's mentality, but here we see women in tears," he said. "In the poor republic, where people in the mountains have always lived in poverty, and where life is extremely hard as such and depends on many different factors, villagers lost their houses. Naturally, it's a blow, and a heavy blow."

Today, the village is visited by a special governmental commission, including President of Dagestan Magomedsalam Magomedov. Earlier he said that every suffered family will be given monetary help amounting to 25,000 roubles per family.

According to the SRC's spokesman, the fire in Tsibari was caused, under preliminary conclusions, by careless fire handling.

Meanwhile, the victims themselves put forward different versions of the incident. "There's no consensus among villagers; however, some of them believe that the strong wind, which was blowing on that day, could take sparks from the landfill smouldering in the outskirt of the village and throw them to the haylofts, located nearby," an eyewitness told the "Caucasian Knot".

A column of humanitarian aid from emergency departments in North Ossetia, Karachay-Cherkessia, Stavropol Territory and Chechen Republic will be sent to the Tsuntin District.