MOSCOW --
Prosecutors have charged two more people in connection with an office-building blaze last week that killed nine people in the Russian Pacific port of Vladivostok.
Metal gates blocking stairwells in the nine-story building trapped workers on the upper floors during last Monday's blaze. Several of the victims jumped or fell to their deaths trying to escape the smoke and flames.
Prosecutor Alexander Anikin said in comments broadcast on NTV that an employee of the state-owned Sberbank had been charged with failing to oversee fire safety at the part of the building that the bank occupied.
An Emergency Situations Ministry inspector was also charged for falsifying an inspection report, he said.
Anikin also said trash and cardboard boxes appeared to have contributed to the spread of the blaze.
Prosecutors have already charged a fire inspector with criminal negligence. NTV reported that another senior employee at Sberbank had also been arrested in connection with the blaze.
Televised footage from the fire, which also injured 14 people, showed people sitting in windows with smoke and flames behind them. Witnesses said they saw women who worked in offices on upper floors of the building fall to their deaths.
Russia's rate of fire deaths is roughly 10 times the rate in the United States, in part because of the lax enforcement of regulations and shoddy building construction.
Fires killed nearly 18,200 people in Russia last year, according to the Emergency Situations Ministry, a decrease of about 3 percent from the previous year.
