"There's a nuclear war underway in my neighborhood. Or something is burning. Or some other bad thing happened," one of the Instagram users wrote.
It appeared that a heating oil spill in the Moskva River was burning in the southern part of the city on the border of the Maryino and Brateevo districts. The blazing water ran for about 100 meters along the riverbank with a thickness of about 1 meter, according to Moscow deputy mayor Petr Biryukov. Plumes of smoke rose some 200 meters into the air, Interfax news agency reported.
It only took the fire brigades about 15 minutes to deal with the flames, both in the water and on land.Thirty people and 10 special-purpose vehicles were dispatched to the site to tackle the blaze, which was extinguished at around 5:50 pm local time (1450 GMT), the Emergencies Ministry said.
Марьино сегодня сделало повестку дня на всю Москву pic.twitter.com/nDlznZgWdE— Саша Усольцев (@usolt) August 12, 2015
"The grass combusted and because of it the oil in the river started burning," a source from Moscow police told Tass.However, Transneft, which runs its pipelines through the area, said its pipes had nothing to do with the heating oil blaze.
Comment: Isn't it a little bit strange that two explosions occur at almost the same time in Russia and China?!
"The incident occurred at the site of passage of the pipe. But a two-hour-long check has shown that the main pipeline is operating normally," Igor Demin, a Transneft spokesman, said.
"But we still stopped pumping through the pipe because an emergency regime is in place, despite the pipeline not being damaged," he added.The Emergencies Ministry said that an analysis of air samples taken in the area in the fire's aftermath showed that permissible exposure limits to pollutants hadn't been exceeded, and the byproducts from the combustion pose no threat to the population.
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