1988 Library of the USSR Academy of Sciences fire
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 The library in 2015 | |
| Date | February 14, 1988 |
|---|---|
| Location | Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) |
| Coordinates | 59°56′38″N 30°17′49″E / 59.944°N 30.297°E |
| Deaths | none |
The 1988 fire in the Library of the USSR Academy of Sciences (now Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences) broke out on Sunday, February 14, 1988, in the newspaper section on the third floor of the library; the cause of which is still unknown. According to the library's acting director Valeriy Leonov, the fire alarm sounded at 8:13 pm, when the library was closed for visitors. By the time the fire was extinguished the following afternoon, it had destroyed 298,000[1] books of the total 12 million housed, two to three million more were damaged by heat and smoke. About 734,465 copies volumes initially became damp due to firefighting foam.[2] Many of the lost volumes were part of the Baer Collection of foreign scientific works: 152,000 were lost. The rest 146,000 were Russian books.[1]
The lost fund was partially restored, large batches of books and individual rare editions came from more than 700 domestic libraries to replenish the lost funds.[1]
Many of the lost books were foreign scientific works.[3]