When bright screens go black
By Yuri Novoselov Posted Jan 1 2001
It is now known as “black Sunday.” On Aug. 27 this year fire broke out at the top of the Ostankino television tower, one of Moscow’s modern landmarks. Transmitters for all the major television channels in the Russian capital were forced off the air, and a crisis loomed.
Three workers went aloft in an elevator to install asbestos firewalls in the hope of containing the blaze. They were Vladimir Arsyukov, chief of district fire service; Alexander Shepitsin, a technician in the tower; and Svetlana Loseva, 24, an elevator operator who got married one week before.
A day later they were found dead in the car. The three were trapped in the elevator at 235 meters from the ground for hours while the searing heat prevented firefighters from rescuing them. Eventually, the steel cables holding the elevator melted from the heat of the fire, and the car plunged to the ground. The lift’s counterweights fell and smashed into the cabin.
Six months earlier, in a television interview with the regional television network TNT, Loseva said she was proud to work at Ostankino. “Our lifts are unique. Their speed is more than seven meters per second. Nobody has faster ones.”
The 540-meter high Ostankino TV tower is a Moscow beacon and a technical miracle of the postwar period. It is the tallest structure in Europe and the second tallest in the world.
The tower was completed on Nov. 5, 1967, just before the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. The year it was constructed, it surpassed the Empire State Building as the world’s tallest structure and held the title until 1975 when it was exceeded by the CN tower in Toronto, Canada. The Ostankino TV tower was designed to survive a nuclear attack.
All television stations operating in Moscow, except for one that uses its own transmitter, are connected to the Ostankino TV tower by fiber optics. Transmitters are installed in the lower part of the tower. Had the fire damaged the lower section of the structure, broadcasts in all Russia would have been cut.
The tower has the characteristics of a huge antenna, but its upper section serves only Moscow and the city’s region.
An electric fault in the cabling has been cited as the blaze’s probable cause. Moscow fire chief Leonid Korotchik says the short circuit could have been a result of the constant overloading of the electronic systems in the tower. Korotchik says the installation of transmission equipment for pager systems had led to an overload and violation of fire regulations.
At one point, Chechen rebels claimed responsibility for the spectacular blaze. “The fire was a very successful action that our special units carried out,” Information Minister Akhmed Sakaeyev told a German radio station. Later, however, a spokesman for Russia’s Federal Security service said Chechen terrorism was not considered a possible cause.
The conflagration spread rapidly through Ostankino’s ventilation and lift shafts. Korotchik says firefighters arrived at the site within 10 minutes of receiving an alert call Sunday afternoon. However, according to Korotchik, the fire brigade had to wait three hours for authorization to cut the tower’s power supply. After arriving at the scene, Deputy Mayor of Moscow Valery Shantsev called Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who, on his part, called President Vladimir Putin for permission to switch the power off. “If we had cut the power earlier, we would have probably been able to localize the fire,” Korotchik says.
The failure to cut power resulted in a series of short circuits that kindled new conflagrations. Automatic firefighting systems within the tower failed. It took more than 24 hours to stop the fire.
From Sunday afternoon till Sunday night, firefighters were only concerned with the rescue of the three people trapped inside the elevator, Russian media reported. Equipped with heavy rubber coats and gas masks, firefighters had to climb hundreds of stairs and carry heavy fire extinguishers collected from around the city. By early Monday morning, the fire had eaten its way down to 120 meters above ground. Finally, when the blaze was down to 66 meters, the foam barrier established by the fire brigade stopped it. Until then, firefighters watched helplessly as clouds of smoke engulfed the tower.
A city surveyor on the scene, Vladimir Aleksin, told The Associated Press that the tower’s upper spire had tilted slightly and the tip of the structure had moved about two meters off-center as a result of the fire.
The blaze destroyed all the feeders inside the tower so that the day of the accident, about 15 million viewers in Moscow and its region found themselves confronting black TV screens.
For those Russians who depend primarily on TV for both information and entertainment, the accident meant a sharp change. “For me, it was the only pleasure I could afford, and I don’t know how I will live without it for so long,” says Tamara Voronina, a pensioner.
Many Russians spend up to five hours a day watching television. When the Echo of Moscow radio polled its audience about the Ostankino fire’s aftereffect, a woman burst into tears when answering the question, AP reported. Those tears were not only about missed soap operas, which had become increasingly popular in Russia. The years of economic reforms drove elderly people below the poverty line. Buying a newspaper copy on a daily basis for a month is considered a luxury since the purchase amounts to one fifth of a Russian pensioner’s monthly budget. Today, an average monthly pension in Moscow ranges between US$30 and $40.
Lack of money is not the only reason for the tough lives pensioners live. Their dreams and beliefs have been shattered. The August tragedy of the Russian submarine Kursk, which sank in the Barents Sea, and the Ostankino TV tower fire represents the aftermath of an ideological crash. The Ostankino accident showed that the capital does not have a reserve broadcasting facility. “The absence of television in the very heart of Russia is just weird,” says Eduard Sagalayev, the head of Russian Broadcasters’ Association. He predicted it might also provoke unforeseen reactions, especially among psychologically unstable people.
Moscow’s Ostankino TV tower collapse was seen as a symbol of the country’s physical and psychological deterioration. Putin says that the fire illustrated “the shape of our vital installations and the overall state of our country.”
Almost all channels resumed broadcasts by the end of the week following the fire. On Aug. 30, the all state-owned RTR and the 51-percent state-owned ORT television stations launched a joint channel until regular programming was restored on Sept. 3.
Repairs to the Ostankino TV tower will cost about US$60 million and take at least a year to complete.
Restoring the old Ostankino broadcasting system, which centralizes all transmitters in one place will give the government unrestricted power over Moscow’s basic information feeder.
The television “blackout,” however, gave Moscow’s print media an unexpected boost. Vasily Bogdanov, executive sales director of Izvestiya daily, says: “With the TV gone and little radio, the lack of information forced people to run to the papers. Our sales increased by 20 to 30 percent.” Mikhail Berger, editor in chief of Segodnya daily, claims that the newspaper’s sales increased by 10 percent. Vladimir Shilin, distributor of the financial newspaper Kommersant, was happy to note that the publication gained many new readers. James Hansam of the London Evening Standard says that today’s press scene in Moscow contrasts sharply with the Soviet one. “While many papers are in the pockets of newly rich millionaires, ownership is diverse enough to ensure no one is beyond vitriolic criticism. The ‘free’ press is seen as a key reason why Putin ordered urgent measures to restore TV pictures as quickly as possible to his capital,” claims Hansam.