Residents of Podolsk told how they are freezing alive: electrical panels are frozen over, basements are flooded

In Klimovsk, a long-suffering microdistrict of Podolsk, they continue to eliminate the consequences of a communal disaster. Emergency teams from all over the Moscow region work in the city around the clock. Residents report that pipes in apartments, barely warming up, become cold again after a few hours. There are also power outages. Wires burn due to overload. Residents of Klimovsk told MK about what they experienced during the five “glacial” days.

“There was no heating on January 4,” says Alexander, a resident of building 1-B on Revolution Street. — We have a nine-story panel building. The temperature in the apartments dropped rapidly at minus 25 degrees below zero. Even with the heater on, it did not rise above 10-11 degrees. I slept in a sleeping bag with a thick blanket thrown over top. Someone filled plastic bottles with hot water and climbed under the blanket with them.

As residents of Klimovsk say, in their apartments they wore outerwear, hats and mittens. The window glass was covered with ice on the inside.

“Every day we heard that the houses were about to be heated. Emergency teams were sent to the city from Moscow, Lytkarino, Mytishchi, Solntsevo, Chekhov, Serpukhov. The boiler room was started up, but heat did not reach most houses due to breaks in the heating main. The electricity also went out periodically.

Residents of Klimovsk indicate that officials reported on how many houses were connected to heat. Therefore, first of all, they allegedly sent teams not to nine-story buildings, but to five-story and two-story buildings.

The basements of many houses, as local residents say, are now flooded with water due to burst pipes. Some people’s electrical panels are frozen over in the entrances. In local chats, residents are calling on neighbors to urgently provide access to the entrance riser, which they have blocked off with storage rooms.

We also have to look for owners of shops located on the first floors of residential buildings so that there is access to the riser.

Ekaterina, who lives in house No. 13a on Prospect 50 Let Oktyabrya, shared that they still do not have heating and the light periodically goes out.

“We have a nine-story building,” says Ekaterina. — When there was light, we warmed ourselves with a heater, and then with gas. My mother is bedridden, group 1 disabled. I cover her with five blankets. Now at work, but my soul hurts – how is she doing?

Alexander, in turn, says that the radiators in their house only became a little warmer in the evening of January 8th.

— Our house is located on the very outskirts. From five in the evening, repairmen began working for us. At the entrance, right at the entrance, the battery burst. It had to be changed, like many pipes. As you know, water in pipes at a temperature of minus 25 degrees freezes within three hours. At first, the emergency crew simply heated the pipes with a heat gun. When the pressure was applied, we looked at where it leaked and cut out this area. The same thing is happening in houses throughout the city.

Our interlocutor says that the house was very frozen during the five days of frost.

— The radiators are warm now, but the apartment is warming up very slowly. It’s still +10 degrees in the rooms. The heat periodically disappears. Somewhere a pipe breaks, the heating is turned off, the water is drained and reconnected. I talked to the neighbors, and now there is no heat in the whole house.

According to our interlocutor, a lot of diesel engines were brought to the city.

— The power grids are overloaded due to the heaters being turned on. There is a substation near our house. But yesterday we lost electricity. Approaching the electrical panel, I realized that one phase was missing. And exactly ours.

Repairmen, as Alexander says, have their own small diesel engines. Crews work around the clock.

Electricians, according to residents of Klimovsk, are now going from house to house, checking whether the meters are overheating.

There is one question on everyone’s lips: why hasn’t the city built its own municipal boiler house in all the years since the 90s? How was it possible that heat in houses where 22 thousand people live was provided by a departmental boiler house located on the territory of a sensitive facility – the Klimovsky Specialized Cartridge Plant?

“We were informed that there was a power outage, then a water hammer, a pressure surge in the system, which led to bursts in the heating networks,” says Andrey, a resident of Klimovsk. “But facilities such as boiler houses are supplied with electricity in the first category. This means that they must be powered from two substations at once. Plus there should be a battery and a diesel engine. The power supply to such a facility should not be interrupted even for a minute. If this happened at a departmental boiler house, this indicates that all these measures were not provided for there.

According to the Governor of the Moscow Region, Vorobiev, by decision of President Vladimir Putin, a mechanism for the nationalization of the Klimovsky Cartridge Plant has been launched. It is reported that as soon as the boiler house becomes municipal property, its modernization will begin. The staff will be staffed with qualified personnel.