In Irkutsk, a fire at a private auto repair shop on 4th Zheleznodorozhnaya Street injured two workers who tried to drive a Toyota Ipsum out of the burning bay. One man with burns was hospitalized, the other refused hospitalization. Preliminary reports say the fire may have started due to improper use of cutting equipment between two cars. The fire damaged an UAZ, a Toyota Ipsum, and the shop equipment, and the cause and those responsible are being determined.

Two employees of a private auto repair shop located on 4th Zheleznodorozhnaya St. in Irkutsk were injured yesterday in a fire in the service’s garage bay.
The fire report came in to the fire department dispatch center in the afternoon of August 6 at 12:32. On alarm, 7 personnel and 2 fire engines from Fire Station No. 4 and 3 personnel and 1 fire engine from Fire Station No. 1 were dispatched to the scene.
At the time the first unit arrived, at 12:40, smoke was coming from the auto repair building located on the grounds of a garage cooperative. The fire occurred in a one-story brick auto repair building measuring 40 x 30 m.
A gas and smoke protection team from Fire Station No. 4 entered the smoke-filled premises. At the same time, two men — service workers, migrant laborers — were evacuated from the service bay with second-degree burns. The injured man, born in 1990, with burns to the shoulder and forearm (9% of the body surface), was hospitalized in the burn unit of City Clinical Hospital No. 3; his condition is satisfactory. The other injured man, born in 1977, suffered a burn to the thigh (6% of the body surface) and refused hospitalization. It turned out that the workers had tried to drive a Toyota Ipsum out of the burning garage on their own.
According to senior expert of the forensic examinations sector of the State Institution “Forensic Expert Institution of the Federal Fire Service ‘Test Fire Laboratory’,” Major of Internal Service Dmitry Postnikov, the preliminary version is that the fire may have started due to a violation of the operating rules for cutting equipment located in the service bay between two vehicles (an UAZ and a Toyota Ipsum), which were in the garage at the time of the fire. The rear part of the Toyota was in the area of the fire origin.
The gas and smoke protection team worked for 20 minutes.
The fire was extinguished at 13:02, and the consequences of the fire were eliminated at 13:25.
As a result of the fire, the combustible parts of the UAZ were destroyed, service equipment and shelving with materials over an area of 16 sq. m., and the plastic parts of the Toyota Ipsum were damaged.
At present, the ownership and insurance status of the vehicles and the auto repair shop itself are being established, since its workers, who practically do not know Russian, were unable to answer the investigators’ questions.
The legality of the operation of this auto repair shop and the presence of its workers on the territory of the Russian Federation is also being established.
The cause of the fire, the responsible person, and the damage are being determined.
Based on materials from the press service of the Main Directorate of the Russian Emergencies Ministry for the Irkutsk Region