A spring sunbeam almost set an apartment on fire in Vitebsk

March 21, Vitebsk / Diana Kurilo - BELTA/. A spring sunbeam almost set an apartment on fire in Vitebsk. The Vitebsk city department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations told a BELTA correspondent about the unusual, but scientifically explainable cause of the fire in a multi-story building in the regional center. The report that a fire had likely occurred in an apartment on the tenth floor of a new building in Vitebsk was received by the duty officer of the Ministry of Emergency Situations late in the evening. The arriving firefighters saw a plaid almost completely burnt on the bed, a burnt-out bed, and walls heavily smoked throughout the apartment, although there was no open flame. According to the owner, she left for work early in the morning and returned only at ten o'clock in the evening, and there was no one else in the apartment. While establishing the cause of the fire, specialists made sure that all electrical appliances in the apartment were turned off and the electrical wiring was in perfect order. They were ready to believe in a poltergeist when their attention was drawn to a small mirror standing on a table by the window: on one side it was ordinary, and on the other it was convex, like a lens. They immediately recalled their school physics course and their cheerful childhood, when everyone at least once tried to start a fire with a sunbeam and a magnifying glass. But firefighters are serious people, so the next day they decided to conduct an experiment and make sure that the convex mirror and the beam reflected from it had indeed become the cause of the fire. As it turned out, it only takes five seconds to set a plaid on fire in this way. One can only imagine how many times this very plaid burned throughout the day while the bright spring sun shone through the window, and how long the bed smoldered under it. The fire did not flare up only because all the vents in the apartment were closed, and there was no access to oxygen. According to firefighters, they do not recall such causes of fires in apartments, but in forests, when a sunbeam reflected through a shard of glass becomes the cause of a fire, it happens quite often. -0-