Three people rescued from a fire at midnight today in Vitebsk

July 21, Vitebsk / Sergei Kochetov - BELTA /. Three people were rescued from a fire today at midnight in Vitebsk by employees of the city department for emergency situations, the propaganda and training center of the regional department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations told a BELTA correspondent. The incident occurred in one of the two-story residential buildings in the regional center. By the time rescuers arrived, the fire had engulfed two apartments on the first and second floors of the four-entrance building, and thick smoke filled the corridors. As a result, two men and a woman were rescued from apartments adjacent to the fire's epicenter, and three more residents were evacuated. The suspected cause of the fire is careless handling of fire by the unemployed hostess (born in 1974) of one of the apartments. An investigation is underway regarding this fact. In total, over the 6 months of 2009, the Ministry of Emergency Situations units in the region rescued 137 people from fires. In addition, material assets worth about Br7.7 billion were saved, the destruction of more than 1.3 thousand buildings, 47 tons of fodder, almost 80 units of equipment, and 466 heads of cattle was prevented. In total, 823 fires were registered in the region in the first half of the year, in which 96 people died, including 6 children. -0-