This week, good news have finally appeared.  The first and most important one is they have begun to take the books out of the building.  As the investigators are still working in the building, almost no one is allowed to come inside, so only a limited number of employees take part in the transportation of the books.  We hope later we’ll be able to increase the work pace.  The Institute has made contracts with several cold storage facilities to freeze the books, and the Federal Agency for Scientific Organisations has approved the purchase of a freeze drier to dry them.  Those books which are not too wet, will be dried in a separate rooms with special temperature and air humidity.  One of nine sections of the book depository, the current journals, hasn’t suffered at all.

In some rooms, there’s already electricity and heating.  The typography is at work again, and the publishing department will probably continue its work soon, too.  The government has decided not to destroy the building, but there are no details yet.  The remains of the roof are being taken out from around the building; we are looking forward to see them taken out from the second floor as well.  They are going to isolate the western half of the building from the destroyed part of the eastern half, so that we’ll be able to use the western half while the eastern one is under reconstruction.

The trees from the second floor which we took off the building on previous Wednesday are at a greenhouse now.  All of them are alive, although in a different condition, unfortunately.  We hope all of them will recover.

The causes of the fire are still unclear.  The main versions being discussed are the same as previously: an incident with electricity, an arson, a stray petard.  Until they take the remains of the roof out from the second floor, there hardly will be any more information.

Now the sad news.  According to the calculations that have just been published, almost half of the books that were stored in the building are lost.  Before the fire, the library of our Institute had some 14,700,000 books, but this number includes 3,700,000 books which are stored at the branches of our Institute at the other institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a great number of books that had been prepared for transportation to the Institute of World Literature many years ago, but that institute hasn’t take them.  Many of them were stored in boxes on the second floor and have been of course completely annihilated by the fire. 800 thousand more are in a hangar in the courtyard of our Institute up to now.  So there were some 10,200,000 books in the building.  5,400,000 of them have burned, that is, the collections of the reading rooms on the second floor, the books for the Institute of World Literature, and some part of the main book depository.  Among them 1,100,000 books were published in Russia since 1945, they are available at other libraries.  800 thousand books are available at the branches of our Institute at the other institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences.  1,200,000 books were the out-of-date ones and second copies which were to be discarded anyway in order to get some free space for new books: our depository is designed for 7 million books, not for 10 million.  So the really irretrievable losses are 2,300,000 books.  Only a death of a beloved person may be more painful.

4,800,000 books have survived.  Almost 3 million have to be freezed; nobody can imagine how long it will take to restore them.  About a million books are in a satisfactory state, among them are the most valuable—the scarce books collection and the Gottish Library that was brought to the Soviet Union after the Second World War.  Fortunately, they were stored on the ground floor.  890 thousand books are the out-of-date ones and second copies which are to be discarded anyway.

It was one of the best libraries in the USSR and it continued to be one of the best libraries in Russia even in the recent years.  When libraries begin to burn, it’s a bad sigh for any country…

An experts’ report has finally been published on the website of the Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences on necessary measures for rescuing the books from the Institute’s library.  Unfortunately the document still doesn’t contain any detailed plans; neither does it contain any estimations of the damage to the main book depository from the fire.  Waiting for further information…

The Jewish holiday of Tu BiShvat, or the New Year of Trees, that was on 4 February this year, I had to celebrate at work.  Some of the evergreen inhabitants of the second floor have survived the fire, and we didn’t want them to die from cold, so we decided to take them out of the building and to bring them to a greenhouse for temporary storage and did this on Wednesday evening.  ‘We’ were a group of the Institute’s researchers (mostly from our department of history, that was especially pleasant 😉 ), post-graduate students and our friends and colleagues who volunteered to help us.  The work was hard, but now there’s a hope at least some part of the plants will survive and recover.

Unfortunately it was the most serious of what we could do for our Institute that time because we still don’t know whether the fire has damaged the main book depository and to what extent.  The more or less exact data will probably appear only next week.

The view inside the building, especially late in the evening, is rather post-apocalyptic; somebody has already compared it to Chernobyl.  Dark, cold, ice underfoot.  While entering the hall of the catalogue, not separated from the destroyed part of the building, one feels an abrupt change of the temperature as if one came into the open space.  Dust, soot, pieces of fluorescent lamps rustle underfoot.  Holes in the floor, through which they were pumping water into the book depository; we had to keep our lamps turned on all the time in order not to break our legs.  Flecks of snow are falling from above.  The eastern half of the second floor is completely ruined; the remains of the roof are lying on the floor, covered with snow.  Shelves of the book depository can be seen through the holes in the floor.  When we looked from one side, we saw empty shelves; when we looked from another side, we say shelves with books.  It was of course impossible to understand their condition from such a distance and in the darkness; we could only see that everything was in the dust.

The situation as a whole is clearing up little by little, although not so quickly as we’d like.  It seems that apart from the book depository, only the second floor was burning, and the first floor a little; the ground floor suffered only from a flood.  Documents of the administration are already being taken to a new place.  The publishing department and typography (and the cafeteria as well 😉 ) are expected to resume operation soon.  The major conference hall is all right.  The readers’ catalogue is also alive and even dry.  The German Historical Institute had only a little damage; at least the books have survived, although are rather dirty and need to be dried.  It’s really a good luck as their library was right on the front line.  The Franco-Russian Centre, as I can understand, has survived, too.

Our department of history is buried under the fallen roof.

The causes of the fire are still unclear, but the experts are said to be already working.  Folks discuss three versions the most actively: incident with electricity, arson, a petard that had fallen on the roof (somebody was probably seen letting off fireworks not far from our building).  All of this is still pure guess-work.

They try to repair the computers, but the perspectives are questionable.  The ancient Hewlett-Packard where our electronic catalogue was functioning has, as I’ve heard, not suffered from the fire, but had a long ‘shower’.  Whether they’ll be able to reanimate it after that is a good question, unfortunately.

The administration has temporarily moved to the building of the Central Economic Mathematical Institute.  Besides that, our Institute will probably get an empty building at Krzhizhanovskogo Street and a ‘corner’ at the Central Scientific Medical Library (both are not far from our own building).  It’s also expected that new books will be catalogued at the Institute of World Literature and stored at the branches of our library at the other institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, with a mark that they are our property and should be returned to our Institute as soon as it’s restored.

It seems that our director still hopes to repair our building.  We were also told that our help will probably be needed next week to take the books out of the depository.  As I can understand, all or a great part of them have to be frozen and then dried.  I’ll try to write again as soon as I have any more information 🙂

One more attempt to summarize information from different sources including my colleagues’ own observations.  It seems that by now the fire is mostly extinguished, smoke isn’t coming out of the building almost at all.  The water has been pumped out.  The firemen will probably stay at the place to clear the debris, but it was said the experts had already begun their work.  The causes of the fire are still unclear, there are a lot of versions being discussed, but none of them looks reasonable enough.

The smoke that was inside the building has been sucked out, but the walls haven’t cooled yet, so not all the rooms are accessible.  What has survived with a high probability are the publishing department with the typography, the accounts and planning departments, the cafeteria ;-), the German Historical Institute and the Franco-Russian Centre, and the paper catalogues of the library—both the public catalogue and the service catalogue.  What has probably survived too, but with not so high probability, are the personnel department and the directorate.  What has certainly burned are the research departments and the specialized reading rooms with their own book collections; they gave the main ‘food’ to the fire.  The fate of the servers is still unknown, including the antiquarian Hewlett-Packard mini-computer where the electronic catalogue was functioning that was the basic part of all the library’s infrastructure.  It’s also unclear if the main book depository has suffered from the fire and to what extent.  The researchers will continue their work at home, our salary won’t be reduced.  The research work and informational work will be continued.  It was also decided to increase the number of guards this week and to organize additional volunteer patrols of the Institute’s employees.  It’s too early to discuss the further perspectives: there are a lot of potential opportunities, but a good question is if at least some of them will be actually realized.

Prime-minister Dmitrii Medvedev has ordered the vice-premier Arkady Dvorkovich ‘to prepare suggestions on the restoration of the library of the Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences’.  We are waiting for the results.

A petition to save the Institute has been published in the Internet (in Russian).  We’ll be really grateful for your signatures 🙂

…began yesterday at about 10 p.m. Moscow time.  AFAIK the firemen are still going on liquidating the last small seats of fire.  No one has suffered, at the moment when the fire began, there was nobody in the building except the guards.  There’s even a hope that the book depository has survived, but I’ve got no idea at all about in what condition it is now.  Here the good news are over.  At least a half of the second floor is burned, the roof has fallen down.  The first floor was burning too, I’m not sure about the ground floor.  The inflammation began at the second floor, the causes are still unclear.  It was said on wireless that the fire began in one of the rooms which had been leased—it’s incorrect; there were no tenants in that part of the building.

No more details yet.  I’ll write again when I get any new information.  What will be the consequences for all of us—is still unclear too.  The building is now completely unsuitable for work and, I’m afraid, cannot be restored.  Further developments will depend on in which direction the brains of the Federal Agency of Scientific Organizations and of the rest of the ‘vertical of power’ will work.  The thoughts coming in my own mind are quite unhappy, unfortunately.

A good set of photographs is available here: http://www.kommersant.ru/gallery/2658662#id=1113827.

The salary arrived to my bank account right at midnight, when the fire was on its peak…

Update.  According to the latest information from my colleagues who were at the place today, in the early afternoon the firemen were still going on flooding the building with water, and it was still impossible to get inside because of smoke.  The fate of the book depository (14 million books) remains therefore unknown.  Half of the second floor is ruined, but there is still a hope the German Historical Institute has survived at least partly.  There was a meeting at the Federal Agency of Scientific Organizations, we are waiting for the results.

Time to go to bed.  There won’t be any definite information until tomorrow evening.  The building is still in smoke, this evening there probably still remained several seats of fire.  We are still afraid the fire could have got into the main book depository.  But there’s a hope the publishing department and typography have survived.  Organizational issues are being resolved, but it’s too early to say anything with certainty.  I’ll try to write again tomorrow or on Monday.  Hope something will be clear by that time.

1 February. Some more information.  Yesterday the Ministry of Emergency Situations reported the fire was extinguished, but in fact, the firemen are still going on working.  Smoke is still coming out of the building, but no fire can be seen.  What has probably survived are the German Historical Institute, the Franco-Russian Centre, administrative departments in the western half of the building, the publishing department, the typography, the readers’ catalogue.  The main book depository is said to have survived too, but there are still two columns of smoke over the building, one of them in a very bad place.  What has certainly burned are the specialized reading rooms with their own book collections, research departments.  The servers are probably lost, too.  An emergency committee has been formed at the Institute, headed by the director Yurii Pivovarov, questions are being discussed about further organization of the work, liquidation of the consequences of the catastrophe etc.  There’s still no talk about liquidation of the Institute.  A group of help has been created on Facebook, a kind of a public help council will probably also be formed.  No concrete plans on rescuing the survived property, we have to wait until the fire is finally extinguished and there’s no more smoke inside.