Unseen footage of uncoordinated intervention in Colectiv club fire leaked to media after four years

A 20-minute video showing the uncoordinated intervention of the firefighters in the Colectiv club tragedy, which has been kept hidden even from the authorities and prosecutors investigating the case, was leaked to the media four years after the tragedy. Tabloid newspaper Libertatea announced it received the footage from an officer of the Emergency Situations Inspectorate (ISU), whose identity has been kept confidential, and made it public at 10:30 today.

The video was filmed by an under-officer from the department’s information unit, as is the procedure in such cases. Major interventions are usually filmed and, when they are successful, short clippings are usually made public. The department also uses the videos to analyze the interventions and find ways to improve them.

However, in the Colectiv fire case, the video of the intervention was only seen by a handful of higher-rank officers, who decided to hide it as it showed chaos, lack of organization and even lack of preoccupation for the victims, a totally different image than the official one presented by the head of the Emergency Situations Department (DSU) Raed Arafat on the night of the tragedy, the officer told Libertatea.ro.

The video shows mainly civilians helping the victims while policemen and firefighters seem overwhelmed by the situation. A short clipping is available here.

The Colectiv club in Bucharest burned down on October 30, 2015, during a concert by local rock band Goodbye to Gravity. Hundreds of people were in the club that night, of whom 27 lost their lives in the fire and over 30 others died in the following weeks due to the burns or respiratory problems caused by the smoke.

The tragedy led to massive street protests and the fall of the Government led by Victor Ponta, which was replaced with a technocrat cabinet led by Dacian Ciolos. The new Government's Control Body made a report on the Colectiv club intervention which pretty much reaches the same conclusion, namely that the intervention was poorly coordinated and the authorities improvised. The Control Body didn't see the video either.

DSU head Raed Arafat harshly criticized the report at that time calling those who made it amateurs and asking them to rewrite it, according to Libertatea.

Raed Arafat wrote on Facebook that he is the target of a denigration campaign by Libertatea and journalist Catalin Tolontan. He claims he doesn't know anything about this video and that he never received a CV with the video as Libertatea wrote. Arafat posted this during the night, several hours before Libertatea released the video.