Blaze devastates Russian academic library housing unique documents (PHOTOS, VIDEO)
Published time: January 31, 2015 01:38
The fire erupted at around 10 p.m. local time (7 p.m. GMT) on the third floor of the Academic Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences (INION) in Moscow. According to the Ministry of Emergencies, some 2,000 square meters were engulfed in flames, forcing the roof to cave in.
A total of 147 rescue workers and 38 pieces of machinery were used to contain the fire shortly after midnight, the ministry stated.
No one fell victim to the ferocious inferno, and the air quality around the site is within the acceptable norm.
INION is the largest research center in Russia in the fields of social sciences and humanities. Its collection consists of 14.2 million ancient texts, as well as modern texts in Eastern European and Russian languages – including rare 400-year-old editions.
The library, founded in 1918, currently employs 330 people. It also has Russia’s most complete collection of documents – some of them one-of-a-kind – from the League of Nations, the UN, and UNESCO.