25 December 2025
In Serov, Sverdlovsk Oblast, a boiler room breakdown left some residents without heat amid severe frosts, with temperatures dropping to -35 degrees Celsius and below. It’s My City reported this , citing the regional prosecutor’s office. According to the regional prosecutor’s office’s press service, the breakdown left 338 apartment buildings, home to approximately 17,000 people, without heat. Serov is home to approximately 90,000 people. Currently, only two of the three boilers in the boiler room are operational, preventing adequate heat for all residents.
The drop in temperature affected not only residential buildings but also 102 non-residential properties, including two educational institutions, five kindergartens, and a section of the city hospital, from which 49 patients were evacuated. The situation is exacerbated by extreme cold: according to Gismeteo, overnight temperatures in the city dropped to -40 degrees Celsius. The prosecutor’s office has launched an investigation into the accident. The agency stated that prosecutorial action will be taken if grounds arise. Prosecutor’s office staff visited the scene, interviewed boiler plant workers, and assessed the progress of emergency recovery efforts.
The incident in Serov was one of a series of major utility failures that have occurred in Russia recently. On December 22, a pipeline failure in the Akademichesky district of Yekaterinburg left over 6,000 people in 14 apartment buildings without heat. On December 15, a defect at a combined heat and power plant left hundreds of thousands of residents in Rostov-on-Don without heat and hot water. According to the city’s mayor, Alexander Skryabin, the outage affected over 1,400 homes and public facilities. On December 7, a third of Angarsk’s population (167,000 people) was left without heat due to an accident at the local combined heat and power plant, with temperatures in the city dropping to -33 degrees Celsius.
This situation is occurring against a backdrop of critical deterioration of utility infrastructure. According to the Russian Ministry of Construction, network deterioration in the regions ranges from 40% to 80%, and in annexed Sevastopol, it exceeds 90%. As Alexander Yakubovsky, a member of the State Duma Committee on Construction and Housing and Utilities, noted in August, the pace of network renovation in Russia is half that required, which inevitably leads to an increase in the number of accidents. Konstantin Krokhin, a member of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Committee on Housing and Utilities, emphasized that the scale of such incidents is directly related to freezing temperatures: worn-out networks cannot withstand the load, and the situation is exacerbated by the lack of systematic repairs.
“The incident in Serov was one of a series of major utility failures that have occurred in Russia recently.”
Such incidents will certainly increase as money is running out. I hope Ukraine will help by destroying mafia utility infrastructure even more.