Volgograd Freezes as Heating Fails in Epiphany Frosts
Residents throughout Volgograd are complaining of unprecedented cold in their homes—and this during severe January frosts, when even in the regional center the thermometer outside the window drops well below -20°C (-4°F) at night and doesn«t rise above -15°C (5°F) during the day. The cold pipes have caught Volgograd residents off guard, forcing them to seek warmth at work, using heaters for this purpose.
Residents of the Traktorozavodsky District (Tractor Plant District) complained about the cold in their apartments:
«There»s been no heating on Goroховцев Street for two weeks now. The radiators are barely warm, cold water comes from the hot tap, and you have to run the water for a long time to get it warm,« says an outraged resident.
«There»s a utility breakdown in the Traktorozavodsky District. Since 3 a.m., there«s been no water or heating on Zholyдеva Street, buildings 19a, 15a, 11a,» complain residents of northern Volgograd.
«We are forced to warm up at work with three heaters; I can imagine the electricity bills the office will get,» says a Volgograd woman. «There»s no other choice, at home, on Myasnikova Street, it«s freezing. I»m even afraid to go home. I sent my child to her grandmother, at least she can warm up there. In the school there, on Spartanovka, they even canceled classes because of the cold: they also have no heating.«
«There»s no heating at 33 Naberezhnaya Volzhskoy Voyennoy Flotilii (Volga Military Flotilla Embankment) Street. We don«t know what happened, the pipes are cold.»
While utility workers today tried to link the heating outage on Spartanovka to a vehicle hitting a pipe and damaging a gas pipeline, which meant the boiler house simply wasn«t receiving fuel to heat the water, in other districts of the city the reasons for the lack of heat remain a mystery.
«At 114 Angarskaya Street, an 87-year-old grandmother is freezing. There»s no heat, so is she supposed to just freeze to death?« fumes a resident of the Dzerzhinsky District.
«Heating is absent in the Kirovsky District, settlement Voenny Gorodok (Military Town), building 3. We have no idea what the reason is,» laments a city resident.
In response to residents« complaints, »KonTsessii Teplosnabzheniya« (Heat Supply Concession) stated that heating supply had been fully restored on Goroховцев Street, 2, and at 33 Naberezhnaya Volzhskoy Flotilii, and that no complaints about hot water problems had been received.
«At 114 Angarskaya Street and Voenny Gorodok, 3, the supply from »KonTsessii Teplosnabzheniya« was not interrupted and no work was carried out,» the organization clarified. «Heating supply to buildings 19a, 15a, 11a on Zholyдеva Street was not interrupted.»
Recall that recently parents of students at school No. 19 complained about the cold in the classrooms, where parents were allegedly forced to buy heaters for the classrooms. Utility workers insisted the problem was a malfunction in the school«s internal heating networks, while the school principal, in turn, lamented that it was precisely because of the »Concessions« that the children were freezing during lessons.
