Fire Temporarily Knocks Out Broadcast Service in Kiev

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/10/world/europe/fire-kiev-ukraine.html

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KIEV, Ukraine — A fire near a main broadcasting tower briefly disrupted some television service in the Ukrainian capital on Friday morning, as the authorities were on a heightened state of alert because of the country’s political crisis and a major national holiday celebrating victory in World War II.

The fire broke out in a shaft carrying cables between the tower and the Kiev Telecenter, the headquarters of the National Television and Radio Company of Ukraine, at about 4:30 a.m., Ukraine’s Emergency Situations Ministry said.

The shaft also contains high-voltage power cables, and firefighting units were prevented from immediately extinguishing the blaze because of the electricity. The authorities reported limited power failures in the area as electricity was cut to aid the emergency response.

The mayor of Kiev, Vladimir Bondarenko, at a Victory Day commemoration, told reporters that the fire appeared to have been caused by a short circuit and not by sabotage, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported.

The Ukrainian government has been on a heightened state of alert because of the separatist violence in the eastern and southeastern regions of the country. Television broadcasting sites and equipment have been the targets of previous attacks.

Pro-Russian separatists in the east, for example, have cut service to stations broadcasting in Ukrainian, while the government in Kiev has sought to block the signals of Russian-language stations, which have many viewers in eastern Ukraine. In recent days, the government retook control of a broadcast tower that had been seized by separatists in the embattled city of Slovyansk.

In the days leading up to Friday’s holiday, officials in Kiev said they were taking extra precautions against potential attacks, and had set up vehicle checkpoints at strategic spots around the capital. Additional security personnel had been posted around the television tower in Kiev, a distinctive latticed metal spire, according to Ukrainian news services.

More than half a dozen television channels and some radio stations reported brief disruptions to their services as a result of the fire, but broadcasts were quickly restored using backup systems.