Tens of thousands of Crimeans left without electricity after the hurricane begged for help: “There are no repair teams”

Marina from the village of Klinovka has been living in a hotel in Simferopol for three days. There is still no electricity in her house.

“We want to write a collective letter to the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation,” says the woman. “This situation showed the state of the peninsula’s power supply system. It is completely unprepared, not just for natural disasters, but for any adverse weather conditions.

In our village, people have been without electricity for four days. Many left for friends and relatives. We pay for the hotel. My husband went home on Tuesday, fed the dog, threw out the spoiled food from the refrigerator and came back.

At the same time, in Simferopol there is light, the street lamps are on, but in villages and districts the situation is difficult. A state of emergency has been introduced, but what does it give? I didn’t see any heating centers; temporary housing is not provided for families with children and the disabled. I don’t understand why you can’t ask your colleagues from the mainland for help if Crimea can’t cope? From Krasnodar to Simferopol just one night by train. It’s even faster by car.

Marina shows a message from a rural chat. One of the residents of Klinovka writes: “For the first time in three days I was able to reach the dispatch service of the Simferopol district. I was told that we only have one crew working during daylight hours. When I asked why the surrounding villages were connected to electricity, but ours was left, they explained to me that the workers were tired and there was no one to replace them.”

“The meat was rotten, I gave it to the dogs.”

Anastasia lives in the village of Ozerki, Dzhankoy district. For the fourth day, her family has been left without electricity; mobile communications have been lost. “You can’t call anywhere other than emergency 112, including specialized services,” says the Crimean woman.

“Everything here runs on electricity.” We heat the rooms with an electric boiler, the water is heated in the boiler. Well, everything else, of course, too – TV, refrigerator, freezer, hair dryer, iron. There is no gas in the village, and there are no plans to provide it before 2028, it seems there is not enough budget.

After an energy collapse, Anastasia borrowed a generator from her husband’s parents.

– The generator only runs the boiler at minimum power – the temperature in the house does not rise above 16-17 degrees, getting sick is a piece of cake. During these days, 50 liters of gasoline were spent on the generator; they paid 3,000 rubles. This is a lot, considering that we pay 4,000 rubles a month for electricity. There is no way to wash the children because the boiler has cooled down. And my children are small, 4 and 3 years old. That night we slept in fleece suits, terry socks and hats.

Anastasia has no problems with cooking, since the house has a gas stove with a cylinder.

“But we cook a little at a time, since there is nowhere to store food, the refrigerator does not work,” the interlocutor continues. – In the summer we raised poultry – broilers and ducks. We scored about 30 goals in the fall. Everything was stored in freezers. On Tuesday I gave this meat to the dogs, it began to rot. These were our preparations for the whole winter. Now – wasted money, time and effort on growing. And you will have to buy meat all winter. And you know what the prices are.

According to the interlocutor, there are only three generators for the entire village. Many residents have a stove.

“But there’s a catch,” says Anastasia. — The prices for firewood are huge. And the pensions of old people are 10-12 thousand rubles. Salaries are also not very luxurious – 18–25 thousand. But the fine for unauthorized cutting of firewood is 5,000 rubles.

There are no heating points in the village: “They may have installed heating points in Simferopol, but the Dzhankoy district is poor, we have nothing.”

Like many Crimeans, Anastasia complains that it is impossible to get through to the emergency service: “The RES dispatcher does not answer the phone, the village council does not have the information, the district administration answers: wait. And it’s unclear where to knock. All that remains is to write to Putin.”

“Sleep with hot bottles”

Simferopol resident Snezhana has been without electricity for four days. But she is more optimistic.

“We, Crimeans, are a resilient people; we have been through a lot. I think we can handle this too,” Snezhana is sure. — We have had no light, heat or water for four days. It’s 18 degrees in the house, even lower at night. We cook food on a gas cylinder, sleep with hot bottles: heat water in a kettle, pour it into a plastic bottle to somehow warm up. Before, I didn’t understand how one could survive in such conditions, but now I know. Many neighbors have gone to stay with relatives who have electricity. We have nowhere to go, we can only wait.

But another resident of Simferopol, Svetlana, was lucky. On Wednesday, electricity appeared in her house.

— We live on Darwin Street in the Petrovskaya Balka area, in a private house. We heat it ourselves, but the boiler only works with an electric pump. Since there was no electricity in the house, there was no heating, the girl says. “We just picked up my grandmother from the burn center last week. It was hard. Without electricity, the boiler did not work; we had to heat water in a kettle and dilute it in a basin with running water. Luckily there was gas, we could cook. The rooms were lit with candles and lanterns. We warmed ourselves with blankets. The electricity was repaired for the first time on November 27th. But the repairs turned out to be of poor quality, the lights were periodically turned off. And then he was gone again. Only on Wednesday night everything was restored. We hope it doesn’t turn off.

“They haven’t talked about compensation yet”

Yulia lives in Simferopol, in a private house. During a hurricane, her house flooded.

— All houses along Simferopolskaya and Limannaya streets were flooded. We’ve had flooding before, but this is the first time in my memory that we could swim,” says Yulia. “The water first slowly poured over the threshold of the house, and then suddenly gushed out. Closer to 20.00 the water in the house was knee-deep. And by 22.00 it’s already waist-deep. We scooped it out with buckets, but it didn’t help, it arrived quickly. There were sofas in the water that you could swim on. The cabinets with clothes and shoes were simply drowned.

There were four people in the house, two of them minor children. Rescuers arrived around 11 p.m. People were carried out in their arms. I took with me documents, some things for the first time and animals, I have three cats, two hamsters, two parrots and a rabbit. Later a car arrived and we were loaded into it. Then we were given medical assistance and taken to the Priboi sanatorium. The conditions here are good: warm, 3 meals a day, everyone is well-fed, no complaints.

According to Yulia, repair work is currently underway in her area: “They are trying to pump out the water. But the road is in terrible condition; you can only drive along it with special equipment—firefighting equipment or the Ministry of Emergency Situations.”

— Forecasters say this is just the beginning. The weather will worsen, with heavy showers and winds predicted. The storm could happen again,” Yulia adds. “I can’t imagine how to restore houses.” Some buildings are probably not suitable for living at all. When the water recedes, we’ll go home and start counting our losses. But there is no talk of building new houses for us yet. They also say nothing about compensation.