Fires are not a cheerful subject. They don’t make for happy reading. But sometimes it’s necessary to think about them because in a city the size of Moscow, they happen a lot.

In earlier times, Moscow was built mostly of wood and sometimes would burn right to the ground, like in 1812, when Napoleon’s army occupied the city. To this day, historians argue about what caused that great fire.

The cause of the recent fire at the Ostankino TV tower likewise remains a mystery. In the Kukly program on NTV, "Bill Clinton" told "Vladimir Putin" that claiming the Ostankino tower collided with an American submarine would be just too much. But there’s still no official explanation, and unofficial hypotheses are just guesswork.

Most fires in Moscow have two causes – old equipment in companies and houses and weak observation of fire safety rules. Russian men are particularly challenged when it comes to fire safety. They drink and smoke a lot and then like to throw their cigarette butts any old place without extinguishing them first. Sometimes they fall asleep with a lit cigarette.

It’s very difficult to force Russians to follow fire safety rules. Russians need freedom to create, experiment and let their fantasies take flight. Getting around fire safety rules can also be done for money and then there’s the proverb: "If it’s forbidden but you really want to do it, it’s permitted."

All of this means a lot of burning buildings. One of the worst fires in Moscow in recent years happened not far from my building. The upper floors of a 22-story apartment block caught fire. Only then did the firemen discover that they had just one extension ladder that could reach that far. As a result, the inhabitants of the building burned.

The fire was caused by the fact that one of the residents, fearing another crisis, kept a supply of petrol on his balcony. Another resident probably dropped a cigarette butt from the balcony above. Now, at least, the taller Moscow apartment blocks are all equipped with safety ladders.

There have already been two fires in my building this year. The first was in winter, when the rubbish chute caught fire, probably because of another ill-extinguished cigarette, though you never know. We once had a rubbish chute fire when a previously normal-seeming man decided to stuff his Christmas tree down it after New Year celebrations were over. The tree got stuck in the chute and the man decided to burn it. One can only deduce he was drunk when he made this illuminating decision.

The second fire occurred in an apartment when the owners were away. Sometimes faulty wiring or appliances left on are to blame for this kind of fire. In the past, Soviet color TVs were also a danger, as they would explode. A Soviet TV was responsible for the terrible fire in the Rossiya Hotel a couple of decades ago that took a good many lives.

I’ve had to dial 01 to call the fire service on many occasions, and I can say that they really are No. 1 among emergency services. They are easy to reach and do their job very conscientiously, though I think they could do with better equipment and more competent management at the top.

I recall how the Sea Transport Ministry building in central Moscow caught fire a couple of years ago. I arrived about 40 minutes after the firemen. It was an icy and windy night; the men and women working in the ministry were on the balconies and poking out the windows of the burning building and some crawled onto the roof of the next building.

The people shouted and waved their hands, but on the side where I was watching, the firemen had only one fire engine with an extension ladder which they kept moving chaotically from window to window. People ended up trapped in the building all night.

The conclusion to all this is that you should train your noses. It was people in neighboring houses that alerted firemen to the Ostankino fire; the people working in the tower didn’t notice anything themselves.

(Tatyana Matsuk is a former researcher with the Russian Academy of Sciences and a regular columnist for The Russia Journal.)