Residents of Dnipropetrovsk’s Peremoha district will long remember Friday before Oct. 13 and subsequent events in October. That evening before the last weekend people were alarmed by a strong smell of gas in the apartments, on the landings, in the doorways. Many started calling emergency, but the line was either busy or whoever took the phone said they should open the windows and air the premises. On Saturday morning the situation became truly alarming. People who tried to light their gas stoves were frightened by something they had never seen before. At the slightest turn of the knob the burner emitted a jet of fire half a meter high or even right to the ceiling. Some kitchens caught fire and people called the fire department. Emergency teams finally arrived after nine in the morning, but they were too late. Eyewitnesses say that all Peremoha apartments and landings were saturated with gas and there was a strange loud noise in the gas pipes. Frightened residents started running out of the houses. At 10:45 a.m. there was a powerful explosion and the midsection of a 10-story building at 17 Mandrykovsa St. caved in. The third doorway was completely destroyed and the fourth one heavily damaged. The blast wave smashed the windows of the nearby houses. There were shouts for help, groans and moaning everywhere. It was some time before people could get over their shock.
The rescue teams that arrived on the scene started to clear the debris and retrieve victims. There were 27 victims and almost all with heavy injuries. As of Monday, 12 dead adult and children’s bodies have been discovered. Several dozen people are listed as missing and their names are listed on a wall in a nearby school where an emergency headquarters was set up. It does not take a specialist to know that all these people are buried under the debris. Rescue team members say that getting to their bodies will be difficult because the fragments of the walls fell in a tight heap after the explosion, so there are practically no cavities in which victims could be still alive. Grief- stricken mothers have been standing by the ruins for several days and nights. They refuse to leave and accuse the rescue teams of being too slow. What makes rescue operations especially complicated is that there are several concrete slabs hanging above. They can collapse any moment. The rescue teams are afraid to use heavy-duty equipment, still hoping to find survivors in the rubble. With every day their chances get slimmer. The weather is cold and rainy and the surviving victims can die of exposure.
Now and then people from the ruined house claim to have heard the sounds of mobile phones from the debris. Rescue workers keep using specially trained dogs and tapping fallen slabs. So far no survivors have been found.
Emergency Management Minister Nestor Shufrych flew from Kyiv and landed at Dnipropetrovsk two hours after the explosion. He took over command of the rescue operations. He says the tragedy has received a national emergency status and that the government is bearing the bulk of the expenses involved in rescue operations and liquidation of the consequences. The homeless residents were temporarily placed in hotels and each received 500 hryvnias, token money by modern standard. Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych arrived later and promised that all victims would move into new apartments or receive the sums required for their purchase. Thoroughly disillusioned people demanded written guarantees from the head of state who is nearing his retirement but received only oral assurances.
Yulia Tymoshenko outdid the prime minister in every respect. She interrupted coalition talks in Kyiv and flew to Dnipropetrovsk where she set up hear own HQ to help the victims. On Sunday everyone received 2,000 hryvnias from the BYuT. Addressing her fellow countrymen, Tymoshenko accused the government of lack of control over energy and gas-supplying enterprises. She added that after privatization Dniprohaz’s technical personnel was reduced threefold and that this could not but affect its networks and equipment. Minister Shufrych in an interview made several corrections, saying that 40 percent employees, including technical personnel, had been dismissed on a redundancy basis. He added that more than half of the stocks of Dniprohaz are owned by a Russian business. Neither he nor Dnipropetrovsk Mayor Ivan Kulychenko remembered its or its owner’s name.
It should noted that local and Kyiv bureaucrats are keeping the causes and circumstances of this explosion secret. They avoid comment, saying they can’t because investigation is underway, and they adamantly refused to allow journalists to be present during Yanukovych’s meeting with the victims.
The consequences of the gas explosion are still being felt by both the residents of the collapsed building and 5,200 owners of private apartments and homes in Peremoha and its outskirts. Despite the cold weather, no gas and electricity are supplied. Local authorities are afraid that there is still gas in some basements and empty apartments, so the are checking every place before resuming gas and electricity supply. It is obviously a reasonable precaution. About a year ago an explosion heavily damaged a doorway in another high-rise building in the same residential district. Fortunately, that time there was only one victim, the man who caused the explosion. They had hardly had time to repair the doorway when a nine-story apartment building was destroyed by an explosion in Kryvy Rih. And now Dnipropetrovsk again.
