©Tengrinews.kz
A private sector has been flooded with hot water gushing from a break in an old heating line in Petropavlovsk in northern Kazakhstan, Tengrinews.kz reports. The break happened at night and the steaming water was flooding the yards and basements of the private houses in the area for some time before people noticed the thick steam. The residents had to deal with the accident on their own before Petropavlovsk Heating Networks personnel and vehicles arrived. By that time basements and subfloors of many of the houses in the area were flooded and hot water stood 20-30 cm above the floor in the rooms. The residents say that a lot of their property was damaged and they lost everything they had stocked up for winter. We say our potatoes boiled right in the sacks, they say. “The water flow was cut out only at 7:20 a.m. It was flowing so strongly that it was impossible to walk the street, as water was knee-high. We took what we could out of our drawers, moved the sofas and took everything upstairs. An old lady in a neighboring house was home alone and she spent the time until arrival of her family sitting in her room with her feet on the chair without being able to move,” one of the victims, Tatyana Merkulova, said. No official reason of the heating line breakage has been announced. But the pipes that are 20 years old were unlikely to freeze up and blew out. The residents suppose that the metal has been rusted and ruined by waste water overflowing from the runoff water system that is no longer operational in this region.
A private sector has been flooded with hot water gushing from a break in an old heating line in Petropavlovsk in northern Kazakhstan, Tengrinews.kz reports.
The break happened at night and the steaming water was flooding the yards and basements of the private houses in the area for some time before people noticed the thick steam. The residents had to deal with the accident on their own before Petropavlovsk Heating Networks personnel and vehicles arrived.
By that time basements and subfloors of many of the houses in the area were flooded and hot water stood 20-30 cm above the floor in the rooms. The residents say that a lot of their property was damaged and they lost everything they had stocked up for winter. We say our potatoes boiled right in the sacks, they say.
“The water flow was cut out only at 7:20 a.m. It was flowing so strongly that it was impossible to walk the street, as water was knee-high. We took what we could out of our drawers, moved the sofas and took everything upstairs. An old lady in a neighboring house was home alone and she spent the time until arrival of her family sitting in her room with her feet on the chair without being able to move,” one of the victims, Tatyana Merkulova, said.
No official reason of the heating line breakage has been announced. But the pipes that are 20 years old were unlikely to freeze up and blew out. The residents suppose that the metal has been rusted and ruined by waste water overflowing from the runoff water system that is no longer operational in this region.