The warehouse’s owner, Wildberries, said in a statement that all its staff had been evacuated and there were no injuries.
The fire extinguishing system did not work when the fire began to flare up on shelves that contained household chemicals, the outlet reported, citing a worker. Many jumped from the second and third floors directly onto the concrete, because there was a strong crush at the emergency exit.
It was not immediately clear what sparked the massive blaze, which spread to cover 70,000 square meters, or over 750,000 square feet. The fire was rated as a category five, the most serious. Officials said that firefighters had succeeded in halting it from spreading further.
A fire has broken out at a warehouse in St. Petersburg, days after workers were involved in a brawl at the site, with arson a suspected cause.
Despite the encroaching flames, a guard continued to inspect the workers to make sure they were not stealing anything, Baza added. Eventually, they ignored the guard and squeezed past him to the exit.
There is speculation that this was a protest against Wildberrie’s involvement of dragooning young men.
Panic as huge fire destroys vast online shopping warehouse in Russia used as location for recruiting migrant workers for Putin’s war in Ukraine amid suspicions of arson
There have been several false fire alarms over recent days and staff initially suspected this to be the case today.
Arson or sabotage is suspected at the sprawling £27 million warehouse, where many staff are migrant workers from ex-Soviet Central Asian republics who military enlistment recruiters have been dragooning to the war, often under threat of being detained or sent back to their homelands for immigration violations.
