5 dead as boiling water floods rooms in Russian hotel

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.

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.

A heating pipe burst Monday in a small Russian hotel. (Reuters image)

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.