In Novosibirsk, authorities decided to place patients back in the City Children’s Clinical Hospital No. 1 on Vertkovskaya Street after part of the roof and ceiling collapsed there. On October 27, regional officials said the building’s first and second floors had been deemed fit for use.
The incident occurred on the morning of October 23. According to NGS.RU, hospital staff noticed a crack in a ward of the cardiology department and managed to evacuate people in time, including patients on stretchers. At about 12:10 local time, part of the roof and ceiling on the third floor collapsed. No one was injured.
Forty-six children were evacuated from the department. Most were transferred to another wing of the same hospital, called “Mother and Child,” while some were sent to other medical facilities and others were told to go home. The hospital itself was not shut down, but the damaged wing was taken out of service pending inspections by builders and prosecutors.
“According to the preliminary assessment, the premises on the first and second floors are safe, and we plan to move children there after the expert opinion is issued,” regional health minister Rostislav Zablotsky said on October 27.
He said all wooden floor beams on the third floor were to be replaced, which would require major repairs. According to the authorities, the work will begin only in warm weather. After the collapse, the Kirovsky district prosecutor’s office opened an inspection, and the regional Investigative Committee launched a criminal case over negligence under Article 293 of Russia’s Criminal Code.
The regional prosecutor’s office said the roof of the 1952 building was last overhauled in 2019. Against that backdrop, Novaya-Europe, citing Rosstat’s “Healthcare 2023” report, noted that 21.3% to 23.2% of inpatient hospitals in Russia required major repairs in 2015–2022, while the share of unsafe outpatient buildings rose from 0.8% in 2015 to 2.4% in 2020 and stood at 1.9% in 2022.