Criminal case files for the explosion in Sighetu Marmaţiei

An explosion took place in a club at midnight and was followed by another one the next day when the people investigating the causes of the incident were injured.

In the deflagration area, the gas supply for the population has been cut off.

In Sighetu-Marmaţiei the investigations continue and so is the establishment of the causes of the two explosions in which twenty one people were injured.

That is why the marsh gas has been cut off on the streets close to the affected building, in order to allow the specialists to carefully search the pipes.

By the cutting off of the gas supply are affected tens of households, individual consumers and legal persons, who do not have electric energy either and for now it is unknown how long will last.

There is no official statement that the marsh gas does not contain methyl mercaptan, but the former director of Distrigaz Nord Baia Mare, Mircea Man, now head of the Maramureş County Council, declared that the gas from Sighet does not have this derivative of the hydrogen sulfide with repulsive odor, used for deodorizing gas.

Also, lots of young people that were in the nightclub and even the consumers connected to the gas network said that they didn’t smell anything like that.

On the other hand, the vice-mayor of Sighet, Ovidiu Nemeş declared on Monday evening that there is mercaptan in the marsh gas in Sighet.

More specialists from Bucharest, Petroşani, Târgu-Mureş, Baia Mare gathered in Sighet forming a multidisciplinary team.

The committee chief, quaestor Liviu Popa, head of Romanian Police says that the investigations inside the buildings have finished, but they continue on the external networks on the two streets.

The prosecutors and the policemen from the County Police Inspectorate investigate the company that provides the gas in Sighet and which executed the work at the gas network in Sighet.

All the documents that were found at the headquarters and at a workstation in the municipality have been taken and sealed.

The magistrates from the Prosecutor’s Office near the Maramureş Court filed a suit against the company for personal injury by negligence, but also workplace accident.

Special measures have been taken in order to protect the population. The area has been isolated on a large perimeter.

Later it was decided that the building be demolished, precisely because of the instability of the supporting structure of an external wall, and the demolishing has been, for now, postponed.

At the Bucharest Burn Victim Hospital are hospitalized six of the seven girls injured in the first explosion and other five patients were brought after the second explosion. Also, there are hospitalized two fire-fighters, two employees of the gas distribution company and the notary who had the office above the nightclub where the explosion happened.

One of the two fire-fighters is badly injured, with burns on more than 70 percent of his body.

Translated by: Camelia-Aura Barbu

MA Student, MTTLC, University of Bucharest