Fire at Moscow’s art museum causes no damage to collections

MOSCOW – Russian emergency officials say that a fire at Moscow’s premier art museum hasn’t damaged its collections.

Smoke billowed Friday from the roof of one of the buildings of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts that houses historic private collections and some museum funds. It took firefighters about two hours to fully extinguish the blaze that erupted on the roof of the building near the Kremlin.

Sergei Zheltov of Moscow’s branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry said that thermal insulation under the building’s roof covering the area of about 40 square meters (430 square feet) caught fire.

Zheltov said that the fire hasn’t inflicted any damage to the museum’s collections. He added that 30 people have been evacuated from the building.

The cause of the fire wasn’t immediately clear.