| The Polytechnic Museum was saved by a foam attack In the center of Moscow yesterday, another architectural and historical symbol of the city almost burned down. At about 11.40 a fire broke out in the building of the Polytechnic Museum on New Square, building 3/4. Largely due to the fact that the emergency occurred during the day, during working hours, within an hour the firefighters reported that the fire had been extinguished, which, quite obviously, caused a deep sigh of relief from many high-ranking officials. After the fire on March 14, when on the day of the presidential elections the Kremlin walls were illuminated by the glow from the burning Manege, any new reports of a fire in the center of the capital, especially in a historical building, may well cause a nervous tic even in the most persistent bureaucrats. Especially considering the fact that, by the will of some evil fate, recently fires in certain famous Moscow buildings quite often coincide with the authorities’ plans for their reconstruction.
It is worth noting that, although the fighters of the capital’s State Fire Service yesterday managed to nip the emergency in the bud - as a result of a fire in the Polytechnic Museum, only one “technical” room burned out and not a single exhibit was damaged, the situation, according to the firefighters themselves, was not the best from the start nice. Built at the end of the 19th century, the museum building, according to its staff, has been “waiting for a major renovation for 80 years.” And, taking into account the peculiarities of such buildings - wooden floors, numerous inter-floor voids filled with centuries-old dust, etc., even a slight delay in detecting the fire and extinguishing it could lead to the most dire consequences.
According to the UGPS, the signal to remote control “01” from the Polytechnic Museum arrived at 11.43. Within 8 minutes, despite traffic jams, the first fire crews arrived on the scene and began work. As it turned out, at that moment there were almost 2 thousand people in the museum - about 1,300 visitors, including a children's excursion, and about 300 employees. Most of them were evacuated through the doors. But, since smoke quickly filled the corridors and halls of the museum, firefighters removed 28 people from the 2nd and 3rd floors using car stairs.
During reconnaissance, rescuers established that a relatively small area was engulfed in fire - about 50 square meters. meters. One of the offices on the 2nd floor and the adjacent room with technical games were on fire. As Alexander Eliseev, head of the main department of the Moscow Civil Defense and Emergencies Department, said yesterday, after watering the walls - in order to prevent the fire from spreading to other floors - the GUPS fighters carried out an additional foam attack and simultaneously penetrated the 2nd and 3rd floors of the building through the windows. As a result, already at 12.41 it was reported that the fire had been completely extinguished. All this time, the museum employees themselves were urgently removing paintings and exhibits from the halls located close to the fire. Above the office where the fire broke out there is an exhibition hall with exhibitions “Russian Light” and “Nuclear Energy”, and below it is a hall dedicated to issues of civil security.
According to preliminary data, the ill-fated burnt-out room was occupied by tour guides. The exact cause of the fire had not yet been established yesterday. Experts believed that the fire was caused by a short circuit in the electrical wiring, which had not been changed for many decades - there were several computers in the office. The only casualty in the incident was a museum security guard who was the first to discover the fire, tried to put it out and suffered smoke inhalation.
The Polytechnic Museum was established by decree of Alexander II in 1872 and opened in 1877, although its building has existed in its current form since 1907. Today it houses more than 160 thousand museum objects, about 150 museum collections, and the Central Polytechnic Library contains more than 3 million books and printed publications. It is noteworthy that, as in the case of the Manege, only last year a decision was made to completely reconstruct the museum. Alexey Grishin |
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