Icicles and despair: Kyiv residents including paralyzed veteran freeze after fire

“Our daily life has turned into a choice: heat or food. It is impossible to turn on air conditioners for heating and cook lunch at the same time. Basic human needs are out of reach for us,” according to the complaints they sent to various agencies.

Gradually, the apartments grew colder and colder. Photos from room thermometers showing +10°C were replaced by others showing +5°C. Eventually, it reached +2°C. In the one or two hours with power, the apartments did not have time to warm up.

“Please, turn on the seventh floor — I am in my apartment wearing a hat and gloves, my feet are going numb,” “Because of the cold I spent more on the vet for my dog than the rent for an apartment costs,” “Give us power, there is a small child,” “Every day I throw the dice: what to turn on — the boiler, heating, or charge the power banks” read the comments that appeared after January 9, when Russian strikes on the energy infrastructure left 6,000 buildings in the capital without heat.

Electricity became even scarcer. Sometimes — 10 minutes per day.

Neighbors in the chat argued, made up, advised one another on how to insulate windows, posted photos of buckets of water on grates with candles burning underneath, and discussed buying a generator.

Then came January 16. Overnight into Friday, an apartment on the top 12th floor burned out completely, along with part of the building’s roof. The cause of the fire remains unknown pending expert examination. One theory is low voltage that prevents electrical appliances from working properly. Firefighters preliminarily stated that fire safety rules have been violated throughout the building.

After the blaze was extinguished water poured down the walls and froze. Icicles hung from railings and external air conditioner units; the stairwells turned into ice rinks. All day residents scraped ice into buckets after first sprinkling it with salt. They bought out every bag of salt in the nearest store.

“The janitor and cleaning lady we pay vanished. We still do not have an electrician. DTEK says we have to sort it out with the condominium association. The head of the association showed up in the morning: ‘I am already nervous, I am nervous,’ then took sick leave, and when we message her, she adds us to the blacklist,” the residents complain.

Friday evening. It is getting dark around the building. Someone walks out carrying bags of clothes: people cannot spend the night in their apartments, where temperatures have dropped below zero. A couple explains that they bought an apartment here (a one-bedroom costs $60,000, seven minutes’ walk to Vyrlytsia metro station — ed.) and just finished an expensive renovation. Now they do not know what will happen to it in the frozen apartment. For the next few days they have rented a place with heat nearby. Price: 1,400 hryvnias ($32) per night.

“Half my aquarium fish died. I took the survivors, the cat, and moved a few weeks ago to my mother-in-law’s in the village. They have a wood-fired boiler. I get up every morning at 5 because I work in Kyiv,” a young woman says.

“Anyone want some alcohol?” a girl in a mink coat calls out. She is drinking something from a tin can. She says it feels cozier outside than at home. She snuggles up to her boyfriend. He puts his arm around her shoulders.

I go up to the 12th floor with activists from the building — Dmytro and Erol. It is dark; we use flashlights. In places, the stairs are coated in ice.

On the way, the young men describe how they lived without heat before the fire: they warmed up at work, ate store-bought frozen meals, and slept under piles of blankets. They caught the single hour of power to cook something or do laundry.

On the 11th floor, the hallway is filled with buckets; water drips from the ceiling. On the 12th, the roof has burned away; in spots, you can see sky through the holes. In the apartment where the fire started — ankle-deep sludge: water mixed with soot. Only the walls remain intact.

Neighbors are gathering in the courtyard. We stand on the thin sheet of ice that covers the asphalt. It is freezing. People do not know how to draw attention to their building; they sent all the complaints and appeals before the fire. Now they are ready to block the street if that is what it takes to get help.

Activist Dmytro leads us to the basement level, where in one of the apartments lives 56-year-old combat veteran Valeriy Antonovych. He is alone. A broken spine means he uses a wheelchair. Or rather, he should — but the modern building has neither ramp nor handrails, even though he requested them. He has had to crawl out to the street on his knees.

We enter the dark apartment. The flashlight picks out the center: a bed piled with blankets. From underneath comes only a muffled voice. His answer to every question — “Are you a veteran?” “Are you cold?” “Are you alone?” — is the same: “Of course.”

Next to the bed are three space heaters: when power was available he turned them all on to warm the tiny apartment. But it cools off just as quickly.

“Because of this cold, his illnesses have flared up. He’s given up hope entirely. He says that in this darkness and cold, he does not even want to live anymore,” one of the neighbors whispers. She is in a puffer jacket, hood pulled over her eyes.

A few people remain in the building overnight. Saturday morning, a message appears in the chat from one of the young women: overnight the temperature in her apartment was -5.8°C. And she has nowhere to go.

The burned-out apartment is now covered in a thick layer of ice.