The warehouse is ablaze
Monstrous cloud of smoke covers St. Petersburg
January 13, 2024, 12:13 p.m
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In St. Petersburg, for reasons that are still unclear, the warehouse of a large online shop catches fire and the fire spreads rapidly. The flames are so high that the fire department cannot put them out. Parts of the city are completely darkened by the massive cloud of smoke.
A huge fire broke out in a warehouse near St. Petersburg. The Russian Emergencies Ministry said the fire area was 70,000 square meters. The warehouse belongs to Russia’s largest online retailer, Wildberries, which, like Amazon, sells a wide variety of goods. Russian media reports that the damage from the fire could amount to 10 to 11 billion rubles, the equivalent of about $126 million.
A message on Wildberries’ Telegram channel said that people in the warehouse had been brought to safety and that customers and sellers would be compensated for lost goods. An unnamed source told Russian news portal RBC that investigators were considering arson as a possible cause of the fire.
Initially, the Russian Emergencies Ministry said that the fire covered an area of 1,000 square meters. But within half an hour, rescue workers said the fire had spread to an area of 50,000 square meters. It is now 70,000 square meters and the fire can no longer be put out, which is why it should burn out on its own. The resulting cloud of smoke stretches across the entire south of the city, write observers and onlookers on X, who shared numerous pictures and videos of the fire.
A few days before the fire, on January 10th, there was also said to be a mass brawl near the camp in which two migrants, one of whom worked in the warehouse, were injured. Russian law enforcement then conducted raids on the warehouses looking for migrants.