“Instead of a mirror surface, an orange glow appeared” – Kommersant FM
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40 people died and more than 100 were injured after the terrorist attack in the Crocus City Hall complex. The FSB reported this. The roof in the area of the Crocus City Hall stage began to collapse due to the fire, and flames were escaping from the windows of the building. According to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the fire area is about 13 thousand square meters. m. Details of what is happening are from Kommersant FM correspondent Vladimir Rasulov.
— I am literally 10 meters from the Moscow Ring Road, approximately at this distance you can now be next to Crocus City Hall. Over the past hour, police officers have periodically pushed back both journalists and the remaining onlookers who had gathered in the parking lot near the concert hall, asking them to move as far away as possible for safety reasons.
During this time, the fire from the roof of the concert hall spread to the left side of the building, just above which the white Crocus City Hall letters rise. Now they are already smoked. Firefighters are shedding both the letters themselves and this part, the atrium. In the room, in which almost everything from the inside burned out in literally half an hour, one could hear very loudly how fragments of the building’s cladding were falling, insulation, and glass were bursting.
Instead of a black mirror surface, an orange glow appeared.
The columns that hold up the remains of the roof are a little visible – fire service personnel are also shedding it. And every now and then sparks and burnt fragments rained down from this part of the building.
It is impossible to get closer than 100-150 m, because police officers with machine guns and in full gear ask people not to come close.
Fire also appeared on other floors of the building, at least two floors below. Judging by how quickly the fire has spread lately, the left side is apparently already doomed, because, again, the fire was spreading with some catastrophic speed.
Eyewitness to the events Dave Primov: “Literally, there were probably 10 minutes left before the start of the concert, and 70 percent of the spectators had already gathered. And then on the left side, somewhere outside the hall, we heard what I thought were fireworks. We were on the balcony above and saw how crowds of people below began to move towards the exit. Then we realized that something was wrong. Those gathered shouted, armed people ran into the hall and began shooting with bursts of machine gun fire. Panic set in; no one knew where to run. People just crashed into each other and fell.
I and several people who more or less remained calm tried to somehow coordinate people so that everyone would lie down and slowly crawl forward and not remain in place. When I raised my head, I saw a dark hall and flashes of bullets from a machine gun and people shooting. I couldn’t see them because we were very far away, upstairs, and they were downstairs near the stage. They shot straight into the crowd, at people. Somehow we were able to crawl up to the top. Shots were heard from the central entrance, so it was unsafe to run there.
As we eventually understood, those who shot came from below, from the main doors, towards the VIP seats, and started shooting there. No such people were seen at the top. Some of the people tried to hide somewhere, we tried to break down the doors to the back rooms, we couldn’t find a way out, we just ran in large crowds, ran into some doors, walls, and ran on.
There was a burning smell, and we understood that it was unsafe to stay inside the building. As a result, in some dark, absolutely large room, the other guys and I were able to break down one door and from there we got onto some kind of technical staircase, along which we all went down. And from there, having broken down the door to the street, we left the building. Everyone started running in all directions. When we ran not far from the corner glass part of the crocus, we saw people running and hitting the glass with their hands, looking for a way out. Someone showed them which way to run.”
Special services officers entered the building. There were popping noises, loud bangs, and something similar to shooting, but in the constant hum it was difficult to recognize what exactly these sounds were – weapons firing, or glass breaking, or the work of firefighters, for example. There are a lot of ambulances here, they all stand with their flashing lights on, making almost everything around them blue. Ambulances constantly drive away from Crocus City Hall; a helicopter with a red cross landed in a nearby parking lot near Crocus Expo; after some time it flew away.
There have been more firefighters over the past hour, they began to extinguish the fire on the left side, from the end, and are fighting the fire directly from the rear. I saw at least two ladders working, one of them pierced the directly burning part, the left one, the atrium, and the second was directed to the center of the building to the part of the roof that was burning at the very beginning.
Kommersant correspondent Alexander Chernykh: “I wouldn’t say that there are any crowds here, next to the Crocus City Hall building. Maybe, from my side anyway, maybe about 100-150 people gathered. The police periodically ask everyone to move further, further and further away. Here, the Investigative Committee employees talk to people in civilian clothes.”
A firefighting helicopter with a special device for dumping water flew past me and made a turn to join the firefighting effort, joining the very crews that work directly on the ground. Moreover, the helicopter is circling here, it makes a turn, in my opinion, for the fourth or fifth time, apparently periodically taking water from nearby reservoirs in order to fight the fire and support the crews who are located directly near the building.
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