Firefighters managed to completely eliminate a fire that began more than a day ago in the main library of the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences (INION) in the south-west of Moscow, said a spokesman for the capital MES.
The fire was extinguished yesterday at 23:24 (MSK). Complete elimination took 25 hours. The ministry clarified that watering of constructions continues. Experts and investigators who are going to establish the circumstances of the fire, its causes, as well as to find out whether the alarm system was triggered, have start working. "To establish the causes of the fire a special examination will be held," TASS quotes the law enforcement agency spokesman.
An RAS Management representative said that, according to preliminary data, the loss to science as a result of the fire could be huge (in the INION stores there were more than 14 million books). President of the RAS Vladimir Fortov said that the fire destroyed about 15% of the materials that were in storage.
