Firemen battle Moscow tower blaze, people trapped

Firemen battle Moscow tower blaze, people trapped
REUTERS

MOSCOW, AUG 28: Russian firemen battled to contain flames spreading through the world's second highest tower where at least two people were trapped in an elevator, hundreds of metres above the ground on Monday.

Almost 18 hours after the fire started at Moscow's landmark, Stankino TV Tower -- twice the height of France's Eiffel tower -- smoke and flames billowed from the huge structure and fears grew that it could collapse.

Some rescue-workers said that the powerful steel wires forming the skeleton of the tower had been damaged by the intense heat.

``Today, we know that some of the wires at 136 metres (446 ft) have developed considerable damage. It is difficult to add anything to this,'' Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu told an impromptu news conference at the scene.

A 700-metre (yard) exclusion zone around the building, which soars 540 metres (1,772 feet) into the sky, was being enforced for security and petrol was being drained from fuel stations in the district.

Hope was fading for saving those trapped in the lift in the burning building. Viktor Luschayev, deputy head of the Moscow Rescue Service, told commercial NTV television there was no way of reaching them.

``It's impossible to get up there now. The temperature is very high, it has deformed the staircases,'' he said. ``The information on the people (in the lift) is contradictory.

``Witnesses said they saw four people -- three firemen and a lift-operator... I can only confirm there are two people there, a fireman and the girl operating the lift,'' he said.

The fire brigade earlier spoke of four people trapped.

The power went off when those in the elevator had reached a height of 271 metres (890 feet) on their way up to deliver supplies to the fire-fighters, the fire brigade said.

Officials later said they could be higher still.

NTV quoted fire-fighters as saying at 0400 GMT that the blaze, which was spreading down cables running through the tower, had gone down as far as 100 metres (330 ft) from the ground, despite efforts to stop it at 120 metres (390 feet).

``Firemen had to flee the fire raging in the shaft,'' NTV said.

Three national television stations, which use the tower as a relay station, were forced off the air when the fire broke out on Sunday.

Transmissions to the regions were resumed by satellite later, but the majority of Moscow's 10 million viewers who do not have cable woke on Monday to white snow on their screens.

Fire-engines have massed around the base of the tower. Thousands of spectators, who gathered at the site on Sunday night, were pushed back to a safe distance because of fears then that the thin spire at the peak of the building might collapse.

Smoke was steadily streaming out halfway up the tower as the sun rose on Monday.

Flames had earlier engulfed the top section of the tower, from between the peak to beneath its 334 metre (1,095 feet) high Seventh Heaven rotating restaurant, which was evacuated soon after the fire broke out.

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov told reporters that the exclusion zone around the tower would remain in force throughout Monday.

RTR State Television, briefly blacked out by the fire on Sunday, said a short circuit in banks of electrical equipment at the top of the tower was the fire's likely cause.

The tower in northern Moscow has elevators at its central core and a single emergency stairwell nearby. Other parts contain radio and television transmitters.

It is surrounded by parkland. The Ostankino Television studios, which house Russia's main TV stations, are also nearby.

Late on Sunday, President Vladimir Putin met Communications Minister Leonid Reiman to discuss how to restore television services, and talked to other officials, the Kremlin said.

On Monday, Putin was due to meet Ministers over the fire, the third major disaster in Russia this month, after a blast in a Moscow underground pass which killed 12 people and the sinking of nuclear-powered submarine Kursk in the Barents Sea, which killed 118 sailors.

The Ostankino Tower was completed in 1967 and heralded as a feat of Soviet engineering. It lost its mantle as the world's tallest structure when Toronto's CN Tower was constructed.