Fire destroys 1 million historic documents

Over 1 million pages of history were lost during a weekend fire at one of Russia’s largest libraries.

CNN reports 147 firefighters struggled for 25 hours over the weekend to put out the blaze in the main library of the Institute for Research Information on Social Sciences in Moscow.

The fire destroyed about 2,400 square yards and 15 percent of all the documents in the library. The biggest social science research center in Russia, the Russian Academy of Sciences president likened the loss to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in Ukraine.

It is unclear how the fire started, but firefighters said the blaze was especially hard to put out because of high temperatures, narrow passageways and the risk of the building falling down.

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