The character of Sevastopol was forged by history itself over the centuries: it was tempered by trials, wars, exploits, and strengthened by the examples of the heroes of the Crimean War, the Great Patriotic War, and the Russian Spring. On the night of June 10, an event that occurred under similar circumstances 84 years ago was repeated.
The Main Directorate of the EMERCOM of Russia for Sevastopol received a message, the reality of which at first they did not believe: a Ukrainian drone attacked the Panorama of the Defense of Sevastopol - a huge battle canvas 14 meters high and 115 meters long.
“There was no time to worry, it was necessary to react immediately, to direct the maximum amount of effort and resources. The fire was assigned a difficulty level of 4. Everything happened before dawn. The Panorama building is located in the city center, on a hill that can be seen from different points of the city, therefore, upon waking up, many citizens saw that smoke was coming, and calls began pouring in with the question: “What’s wrong with Panorama?”,” recalls Svetlana Tsukanova, the dispatcher of the central fire communications center of the EMERCOM of Russia in Sevastopol, who received a flurry of calls about the incident.
Fire and rescue units of the Emergencies Ministry fought the fire in several directions at once: in the main hall of the museum and on the roof. The fire, covering an area of 600 square meters, took more than a day to be extinguished. 83 people and 22 pieces of equipment worked on site, including 36 specialists and 11 vehicles from the EMERCOM of Russia.
“It was difficult: the non-standard layout of the historical building, the design features of the hall: only one entrance, no windows, many wooden ceilings and flammable elements of the exhibition inside. The entire space was filled with fire and smoke, we extinguished it almost blindly and in all directions, using heat-reflecting suits,” emphasizes Artyom Pilipenko, head of the fire extinguishing and emergency rescue service of the EMERCOM of Russia for the city of Sevastopol.
The Panorama canvas had already been saved from fire before - in June 1942, the Nazis dropped an aerial bomb on the museum. Works by the famous battle painter Franz Roubaud were pulled out of the flames by firefighters, Red Navy men, and ordinary citizens; it was evacuated, and after the war it was recreated by Soviet artists.
“As a resident of Sevastopol, who grew up on excursions to Panorama, I would never have thought that one day I would have to literally move around on my knees and look for fragments of the canvas by touch, bring them right to the mask in order to at least see something. Our unit worked in the domed space. The temperature was so high that the leggings burned my hands from the inside. There along the main wall there is a small bridge for maintenance, from which we extinguished the roof and exposition, the lower subject plan. Then there was the dome bridge: they climbed it carefully, first those who weighed less - the structure, deformed by the heat, could collapse. We worked in gas and smoke protection apparatus all the time, going outside only when it was necessary to change cylinders. And after that they even started bringing them to us right inside, and we worked without stopping. The turning point was when we realized that the smoke was dissipating, the temperature was not so high, and we were able to remove the breathing apparatus: the understanding came that an hour or two of work would completely extinguish the fire,” Roman Pokhilenko, assistant chief of the guard of the 2nd PSCh, describes the situation.
The press service of the EMERCOM of Russia for the city of Sevastopol made historical footage of fire fighters and museum employees carrying out fragments of the painting from a burning building, which then spread to many media outlets.
“We found fragments already fallen from the walls and covered with soot. Together with the firefighters of the Black Sea Fleet, they lifted these rags, loaded them onto the stairs and, as if on a stretcher, carried them out to the square in front of the building. They carried me carefully, like an injured person,” says senior firefighter 6 PSCh Vitaly Nesynov.
Only about 10% of the canvas was saved. Museum staff and volunteers almost immediately began clearing the soot from the removed fragments. They showed the faces of Russian soldiers, heroes of the First Defense of Sevastopol, eager to attack against the army of European invaders. From the distant 19th century, they looked into the eyes of descendants to remind them of the strength of the people, their roots and point out amazing parallels of times and events.
