|
Home>News Center>World | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Fire sweeps through Moscow art market
A fire Saturday swept through a sprawling Moscow art market noted for a wide array of Russian handicrafts and Soviet-era trinkets and replicas, leaving at least one woman dead and another injured.
The blaze at Izmailovsky market sent a roiling cloud of black smoke over northeastern Moscow as flames leapt from several structures built to resemble traditional Russian buildings, including one topped with the onion-shaped domes characteristic of Russian Orthodox churches.
The Moscow prosecutor's office said that it suspected arson, news agencies reported.
A woman died from inhaling poisonous fumes, an official at the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry told The Associated Press. Witnesses said a second woman was injured when she jumped from an upper story to escape the flames.
One firefighter complained that their work was hampered by a lack of water at the site.
"Do you really expect there to be hydrants and extinguishers? This is Russia — people don't give a damn," said the firefighter, Vladimir Tensky.
The fire reportedly broke out about 1:30 p.m. A man who identified himself as a merchant at the market said it began in a cafe on an upper story of one of the buildings, then spread to an adjacent four-story log-faced building.
For more than a decade, the market has been popular with locals and tourists, who flock there on weekends to buy crafts and Soviet-era memorabilia. In recent years, the log-faced buildings were constructed to resemble traditional Russian homes, and once-shabby stalls have been refurbished to mimic that style.
An array of cafes and stands sell traditional treats such as shish-kebabs and visitors can watch such shows as a man performing with a trained bear.
Despite the intensity of the blaze, the market was not immediately evacuated, perhaps testimony to Russians' sometimes cavalier attitude toward safety or a reluctance to surrender the brisk Saturday business.
Some merchants were not told to pack up and leave their sectors of the market until two hours after the blaze began. When asked why he had not left earlier, a trader in Soviet trinkets, who gave his name only as Kolya, said: "What for?" he said. "It seemed far away." |
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
