Tuesday, October 10, 2000 Fire Engulfs Metro Tunnel, Passengers Evacuated Safely

THE MOSCOW TIMES

A fire broke out in the tunnel between two metro stations Monday afternoon, causing a 2 1/2 hour disruption along the orange f or Kaluzhskaya f line, a city metro spokesman said. No injuries were reported.

The fire broke out around 12:40 p.m. in a 16-square-meter storage room located in the tunnel connecting Leninsky Prospekt and Akademicheskaya stations.

The cause of the fire is under investigation, spokesman Konstantin Cherkassky said.

Several metro trains that had been in the tunnel when the fire started were pulled slowly to Leninsky Prospekt f the closer of the two stations; from there, the dozens of passengers were evacuated, Cherkassky said.

Twenty additional city buses were sent to transport passengers from the Garden Ring to the Leninsky Prospekt and Profsoyuznaya Ulitsa areas while metro service was suspended between Oktyabrskaya and Noviye Cheryomushki. Trains along the rest of the line operated without disruptions, Cherkassky said, adding that no equipment outside the storage room had been damaged.

ORT television reported that firefighters had been able to contain the blaze in part because power supplies to the affected section of the metro were cut soon after the fire began.

The acrid smoke hampered the efforts of 20 firefighting teams called to the scene of the fire, and service was resumed only around 3 p.m. after the smoke had cleared and passengers were allowed inside the stations, which were still filled with a smell of burning.

The fire on the orange line was the second such incident in the city's metro system this month. Last Friday, a fire in the ventilation shaft at the Kropotkinskaya station on the red f or Sokolnicheskaya f line filled the station with smoke. But metro workers managed to put out the blaze before firefighters arrived and train service continued as usual.

http://www.moscowtimes.ru/10-Oct-2000/stories/story6.html

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), October 10, 2000