| The fire in the arbitration court building was extinguished throughout the night All night on Thursday, the capital's firefighters extinguished a strong fire that broke out in the building of the Moscow Arbitration Court on Novaya Basmannaya Street, 10. By morning they managed to defend the old, pre-revolutionary building. However, both himself and the arbitration court suffered serious damage as a result. The top floor of the building was almost completely burned out and the roof collapsed. The water that firefighters poured on the fire damaged many premises and documents. But the main thing is that the materials of about a hundred cases were completely burned. Most of them concern bankruptcy litigation. As a result, representatives of the arbitration court yesterday announced a temporary cessation of work until at least March 9.
Exactly what files were burned was not yet clear yesterday - court representatives were only trying to sort out part of the archive, which firefighters carried out from the burning attic literally in armfuls. But observers have already noted that the consequences of the fire could be very unpleasant. The Moscow Arbitration Court has recently considered several scandalous bankruptcy cases, including, for example, the case of Moskvich OJSC.
According to the State Fire Service, a signal about a fire on the seventh floor of the arbitration court building was received at 21.06. But when the first crews arrived at Novaya Basmannaya, more than 300 square meters were already engulfed in fire. meters. According to preliminary data, it turned out that the fire alarm in the courthouse went off around seven o'clock in the evening, but at first no one paid attention to it. Later, when smoke began to spread throughout the upper floors of the building, the guards, judging by the spent fire extinguishers found, tried to put out the flames themselves and called “01” only when they realized that they could not cope on their own.
Since the building was built in 1903, the flames quickly spread in all directions along the wooden floors and interior voids, in which mountains of dust had accumulated. By midnight, the total area of the fire had already reached more than 1.5 thousand square meters. meters, while the roof began to collapse and flames rose two to three meters above the building. 85 combat crews were deployed to Basmannaya, and by two o’clock in the morning they managed to localize the fire. But they had to put out the last fires and pour water into the smoking court rooms until the morning. All this time, the arbitration building was cordoned off by police officers, and traffic along Basmannaya Street was partially blocked.
The State Fire Service experts have already established for sure that the fire started in office No. 708, but yesterday they spoke very carefully about its causes. Considering that materials on many controversial business cases were lost in the fire (some involved millions of rubles), a version of deliberate arson immediately appeared. But by the evening the investigation refuted it. As stated by the head of the State Fire Service of Russia, Alexander Chupriyan, “the most likely version of the fire is the operation of the electrical wiring in emergency mode or careless handling of fire.” Yaroslav ZORIN |
|
