Fire in Massive Moscow TV Tower
M O S C O W, Aug. 27, 2000 -- Firefighters are struggling to contain flames leaping a quarter-mile above ground from the blazing upper half of Moscow’s gigantic Ostankino television tower.
An electrical fire broke out in the tower this afternoon, driving three television channels off the air and forcing the evacuation of visitors from a popular tourist restaurant near the top of the tower.
Three elevators in the tower fell from a height of 1,509 feet because of the fire, igniting another fire on the ground floor, Russia’s Tass news agency said.
No casualties are being reported.
According to some reports, the fire was still spreading rapidly at midnight, spreading from near the top of the tower to below the Seventh Heaven restaurant, covering more than half of the building’s total height.
“We have never seen anything like this,” Mikhail Serikov, the head of a team of firefighters, told Reuters. “Nothing like this has ever happened before.”
But Russian news agency Tass reported that the fire had stopped growing by late evening. “The fire spreading in the Ostankino television tower has been stopped. There are no casualties or missing as of 20:45, Moscow time,” Tass announced.
Tass also quoted Minister for Emergencies and Civil Defense Sergei Shoigu, just before midnight local time, saying the situation was under control.
A number of television and radio stations went off the air, and other communications such as pager services were also disrupted.
The tower also links Russia’s police, ambulance and fire services. President Vladimir Putin, who made highly public statements about the fire throughout the evening, summoned Communications Minister Leonid Reiman to the Kremlin to discuss ways to restore television service and keep the fire and ambulance communications running.
Escape From Elevator?
There have been conflicting reports of people who may still be trapped in an elevator, amidst fears that the top of the 1,772-foot tower could collapse. A Reuters reporter in Moscow said a total of four people — three firefighters and an elevator operator — were trapped in an elevator,
The reporter quoted Moscow fire department spokesman Nikolai Starychev sayingrescue crews were trying to reach the elevator. Starychev said power went off when the four were at a height of 889 feet on their way up to deliver supplies to firefighters. They had risked the elevator instead of taking many flights of stairs, he said.
But Tass, hours after saying the four were missing in the elevator crash, reported that they had been found outside the building.
The agency quoted Starychev saying firefighters had used powder fire extinguishers to stop the blaze from spreading. “No one was found” in the elevators that came down, he said.
Europe’s Tallest Building
The fire began at around 3:30 p.m. local time in the wiring of the 1,771-foot tower, the second tallest freestanding structure in the world and the tallest in Europe. Only the CN Tower in Toronto is taller.
“At first, the third level from the bottom was on fire, then the fire slowly moved to the second and to the top ones. And, now smoke is moving down. We have been here for half an hour watching fire,” one eyewitness said.
About 40 fire trucks lined the streets near the base of the cylindrical tower, and a giant water-dumping helicopter was on hand. Some reports said firefighters, unable to use water to combat the electrical fire, were resorting to hand-held fire extinguishers.
Helicopters buzzed over the tower all afternoon, at one point trying to pipe fire retardant inside. But officials appeared to scrap a plan to ferry firefighters to the towersummit.
Short Circuit Blamed
Fire safety service spokesman Vitaly Statsenko said the fire was burning in the tower’s electronic cabling.
It broke out after a short circuit in the wiring used by a paging company at about 1,520 feet above the ground, according to the Russian state television channel RTR, which resumed broadcasting after briefly going off the air.
It knocked off the broadcasts of the NTV private television station and of two smaller stations, TV-6 and Kultura.
Police set up barriers forcing thousands of spectators to stand more than 2300 feet away in case parts of the building collapsed. Two television studio buildings are near the base of the tower, which houses some 20 television and radio stations. But it is surrounded mostly by a pond and a park.
Seventh Heaven Evacuated
The fire occurred in a technical area above the Seventh Heaven restaurant, which offers a panoramic view of the city. Guests were told to leave the 1,096-foot-high restaurant via an emergency exit, one diner said.
“Everyone has been successfully evacuated, and they are all fine,” a restaurant employee said. “For now, the restaurant remains closed for technical reasons.”
The tower in northern Moscow, larger than the Sears Tower in Chicago, is made of reinforced concrete. The interior has a bank of elevators and a single emergency stairwell.
A source of pride and symbol of modernity for the Soviet Union when it was built as the worldˆs tallest building in 1967, Ostankino became a battleground in 1993 when rebels tried to topple the government of then-President Boris Yeltsin. RTR continued to broadcast during the rebels’ takeover of the station.
Although broadcasting resumed to most of Russia tonight using reserve transmitters, Moscow screens remained blank. Only cable television subscribers and those able to receive UHF frequencies had television.
“This is the first time this has happened in the past 10 years,” RTR news editor Yuliya Gavrushina told Reuters. “Even in 1991 and 1993, we continued to broadcast.”
ABCNEWS’ bureau staff in Moscow, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.