Russia’s Emergency Minister Sergey Shoigu led activities to fight fire of one of the highest grades.
Photo: Dmitry Kostyukov
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Komsomolskaya Pravda Burnt Out
Editorial officers of Komsomolskaya Pravda, Parlamentskaya Gazeta, Tribuna and Sovetskaya Rossia newspapers were burnt or overwatered in the large-scale fire that destroyed the state-run Pressa Publishing House Monday, February 13. Asked about the possible reasons, the burnt-down journalists never hesitated to blame the accident on owners of the building, who gathered too many tenants in the old premises with wooden slabs. The ancient wiring just failed to cope with the load, the journalists said.
At Pressa Publishing House, the alarm sounded simultaneously on all floors at around 10:30 a.m. Monday. The people who darted out saw the corridors being filled with suffocating smoke.
The escape was prompt and seemingly efficient, though the elevators had been switched off already. Roughly in half an hour after the alarm several thousand employees were safely standing in front of the premises and watching the open windows of the sixth floor puffing the smoke. The fire was escalating.
In became clear in a while that not everyone has left the building. The guards missed the upper floors – the seventh and the eighth – where the canteen and engineering officers are located.
Caged by the fire, a dozen women dressed just in the whites were crying out for the rescue from the balcony of the seventh floor that is usually used as a summer café. They were told to wait till a mobile hoist with a special access platform approaches the building. Its passage was blocked by the parked private cars.
At last the frozen and nearly subconscious cooks were safely settled to earth. They all were alive, but two women were taken to hospital, one was asphyxiated by gas, the other suffered from high blood pressure. Two firemen were hospitalized some time later, one of them was hit by a roof piece, the other inhaled too much smoke.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 14, 2006
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