Alarm in Sevastopol: city shelters are being set up “on the fly”

Deja vu. When I spoke on the phone with Sevastopol today, the thought that all this had already happened couldn’t leave me. I’ve heard it all before. And all this has already been told to me. In 2014. In 2022. In Donetsk. In Mariupol. In Odessa…

People also quickly emptied their basements of old junk in order to convert them into bomb shelters and purchased the most necessary medications from pharmacies, because “you never know what will happen later.”

“Attention everyone! Air raid alert!” a warning with exclamation marks appears on the Telegram channel of Sevastopol Governor Mikhail Razvozhaev. Since Monday, September 25, the head of the region has announced an air raid alert in the city four times already.

From the moment when the siren starts screaming, as Sevastopol residents have calculated, there are approximately 30-50 minutes to run to the nearest place where you can hide and wait.

“We still have shelters from the times of the Great Patriotic War, many were built during the Cold War,” says Alla, a resident of the city.

The girl said that now they are even allowed into the Museum of the Defense of Sevastopol, there are equipped premises there. Not specially equipped, of course. And as exhibits. So they came in handy.

“Employees are letting people into the shelter under the hill. It has three entrances from three streets. Back in 2014, the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations was given instructions to bring everything into proper shape; in Ukraine, all this was abandoned, because they thought that it was no longer needed,” adds Alla.

An official investigation also began into the incident at the fishermen’s cultural palace, when during the alarm on September 25, children were kicked out into the street. Because the shelter is “only for our own people.”

A man who introduced himself as a fire safety officer explained that these premises are intended for employees of the cultural center. “You have it in your homes,” said the authorized comrade.

“Nobody understands how to react to this. And what’s in his head,” residents of Sevastopol are perplexed.

Yes, indeed, it seems that lately people for some reason are ceasing to be people and becoming functions. They are not able to think for themselves and can act in the proposed circumstances within the framework of rules established by someone. And it’s very scary to try to explain something to such talking “functions,” especially when the minutes are counting.

“The fact that children are hidden in basements is, of course, still a precautionary measure rather than a real danger. Thank God, it hasn’t come to that yet,” Alla continues. “When air defense was heard in the city before, everyone seemed to react calmly, but now after the attack on the fleet headquarters, they decided to play it safe just in case.”

Sevastopol residents say that schools are open, children are going to classes, especially since in lessons they are taught self-organization and how to quickly evacuate during an air raid. “Children are sent to school basements as training.”

But basically life goes on as always. The velvet season is coming to an end. There are a lot of people in Victory Park in the evenings. There are swimmers. “It’s still hot now, although we have walruses all year round. I myself took a dip in the Black Sea over the weekend. Of course, I heard the explosion at the fleet headquarters. I can already tell when our air defense is working. Although for now such cases can be counted on one hand, you still get used to it,” admits 30-year-old Igor.

Management companies are hastily checking the basements. People write complaints that it is impossible to get through there because of the rubbish and everything needs to be emptied urgently, special signs should be hung up, where exactly to run, if anything happens. “And the people who are complaining are the same ones who littered these basements themselves. And now it’s unclear whose property this is, whether to throw it away or the owners will come and take it,” Igor is indignant.

Many, without waiting for permission from officials and the Criminal Code, organize themselves in advance. They set up basements, bring chairs and water there. They say that doing something in common makes you somehow calmer, and working together brings people together.

And here is what the head of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozzhaev, tells residents about the work of temporary shelters in his TG channel: he asks to find out their location by calling the Criminal Code or district administrations, find out in advance who has the keys, and even better, through self-organization, draw up a duty schedule for those who will open the basements in case of alarm.

In cases like the one when the security guard did not allow “strangers” into the fishermen’s House of Culture, the governor promised to deal strictly with them.