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Marina Darmaros / For MT
A view of the blaze from Ulitsa Miklukho-Maklaya early Sunday
No one was killed in the blast and subsequent blaze, which erupted after the pipeline exploded at about 12:30 a.m. Sunday on Ozyornaya Ulitsa on the city's southwestern outskirts.
Five people were hospitalized with burns, though none of them suffered serious injuries, Mayor Yury Luzhkov said. Luzhkov ruled out sabotage or terrorism, saying the explosion was the result of a technical problem, Interfax reported.
Investigators from the Interior Ministry, Emergency Situations Ministry and the Federal Security Service were working to establish the cause of the fire, RIA-Novosti reported Monday.
It took about 50 firefighting brigades 15 hours to extinguish the flames, which could be seen from several kilometers away and set nearby cars and buildings ablaze, news agencies reported.
Firefighters who arrived at the scene early Sunday could not get within 300 meters of the ruptured pipeline because of the intense heat from the blaze, Interfax reported.
The explosion came just hours after the traditional fireworks display celebrating the Soviet Union's defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. Ironically, Deputy Mayor Pyotr Biryukov told Interfax that the fire was the largest in Moscow since the war, known in Russia as the "Great Patriotic War."
About 70 cars that were parked near the scene of the explosion were destroyed by the fire. Some of them went up in flames, while others had their plastic detailing melted by the heat. City Hall said it would compensate the cars' owners for the damage.
The fire also partly destroyed the premises of the near by All-Russian Scientific Research Institute for Optical and Physical Measurements. The institute's facade was damaged, and its windows destroyed.
The spectacular fire drew a large crowd of onlookers, including a person who showed up wearing a Spiderman suit but abstained from any attempts at heroics.
