The head of the PSC was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison after the deaths of two firefighters near Irkutsk.

The head of the fire and rescue unit in the city of Bodaibo, Irkutsk region, was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for the death of two firefighters while extinguishing a high-rise building. This was announced on Thursday, May 15, by the regional investigative department of the Investigative Committee of Russia.

A 38-year-old man was found guilty of committing a crime under Part 3 of Article 293 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Negligence resulting in the death of two persons by negligence").

"On January 22, 2022, a 12-apartment wooden house caught fire in the city of Bodaibo in Okhotny Lane, the residents of which were evacuated by the Ministry of Emergency Situations," the agency said in a Telegram post.

The head of the operation did not analyze the circumstances and did not assess the situation properly, and sent two of his subordinates inside one of the apartments to extinguish it.

The decision of the head of the PSC, made without the necessary awareness of the fire resistance limit of building structures, led to the death of firefighters. Their bodies were found in the basement of a high-rise building.

The court found the man guilty and sentenced him to 2.5 years in prison in a penal colony and banned him from holding certain positions for two years and six months.

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The death of two firefighters while extinguishing a house in the city of Bodaibo, Irkutsk region, became known in January 2022. Igor Rusnakov, the head of the internal service guard, born in 1994, and Vadim Naydenov, a firefighter from the same unit, born in 1997, died. Colleagues expressed their deep condolences to the families and friends of the victims.