Yuri Kobzar19:48, 01/09/24

Accidents and interruptions in heat supply are also reported in the Urals and the Far East.

Against the backdrop of ringing frosts in the Moscow region, the scale of the communal catastrophe is growing with a lack of heating in a number of cities and towns.

As UNIAN previously wrote, the city of Podolsk was the first to suffer, where there has been no heat for more than five days. Some houses were heated from the boiler house of the local cartridge factory. On January 4, an accident occurred there and the heat supply stopped. 

As Astra reports , the problem has not yet been completely resolved, despite the intervention of the governor of the Moscow region. Local authorities report that volunteers have distributed several thousand blankets and heaters to residents of freezing neighborhoods.

Governor Andrei Vorobyov also reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the nationalization of the cartridge factory, due to which the city was left without heating.

However, as Astra reports, the problem is not limited to Podolsk. A similar, if not worse, communal disaster is observed in the cities of Dmitrov and Elektrostal. It should be noted that these towns near Moscow are located quite far from Podolsk, so their utility problems are in no way related to the cartridge factory.

So, in Dmitrov there was an accident at a boiler house that serves 29 houses. People sit without heating and light. Residents of Elektrostal warm themselves outside by a fire. 

“In apartments from 8 to 16 degrees Celsius in different houses, the temperature does not correspond to what it should be. It is impossible to stay in the houses! We are freezing!” – they said, clarifying that there has been no heat in the houses since the very beginning of the heating season . 

Due to the deterioration of housing and communal services systems, residents of Beloozersk near Moscow also suffer. People complain about the cold in the sanatorium of the town of Solnechnogorsk near Moscow, where participants in the war with Ukraine are being treated, as well as in Shchelkovo, where the Chkalovsky airfield is located.

“The families of military pilots are sitting at home at a temperature of 13 degrees,” said a source from the Cheka-OGPU . A similar situation is also observed in Voskresensk, Khimki and Lyubertsy.

But it was not only the Moscow region that was unprepared for winter frosts. Due to a utility accident in Yekaterinburg (Ural), 324 residential high-rise buildings were left without heating. In Primorye (Far East), 6 thousand people freeze to death due to a blast at a boiler house in the city of Nakhodka. 

Earlier, Putin’s press secretary explained the heating accidents as “abnormal frosts” and deterioration of housing and communal services. “Titanic efforts are being made to update housing and communal services systems, but it is impossible to update all the pipes in 10-15 years,” said Dmitry Peskov against the backdrop of massive missile attacks on Ukraine, each of which costs the Russian budget hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars .

(C)UNIAN 2024