This can happen in almost any ex-USSR city. Most ovens in old houses are on the gas supply. This gas doesn’t have any smell, so if someone leaves occasionally or on purpose a faucet open gas fills the inner room space very fast and then just a small spark is needed to ignite it, often caused by the phone call, often at night..
photos by Stalex from kurzal.com
Somebody Pulled my finger!
Unfortunate accident =/ God bless their souls.
Thanks for the pictures, I did hear it on the radio, but didn’t see any pictures about it, until now.
“This gas doesn’t have any smell, …”
Gas we use in our homes actually smells because of some ethanethiol, that is added at gas stations in order that people could easily detect leaks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanethiol
Below the pictures, at least for me, an advertisment appears “UA rentals, appartments Kiev” Not very appropriate =/
This is where AdblockPlus comes to rescue you!
Gas is odorless, but they add t-butyl mercaptan (smells like rotten cabbage) or thiophane (rotten eggs) for this exact reason.
From the info I have this was not caused by a gas explosion. I have personally seen such explosions in the exact same type of buildings. While it does make a huge fireball I don’t think it’s enough to bring down a building. Usually it blows all windows out and causes a big fire, but that is different from demolishing the whole thing.
Initially there were reports that there were bottles with oxygen stashed in the building (a much more likely explanation), but they found them intact later.
I think a boiler is a much more likely culprit. These things take down walls if they explode. Also, they are much more likely to be in a small closed room (bathroom). If it takes down the correct wall, these panel buildings can easily crumble to the ground.
This, or at least the last part of it, is the most ridiculous thing I could imagine. I’m a civil architect in Estonia, former USSR member, I have taken part of planning and building this kind of houses for the half of my life. The bathrooms of the 5 floors form a so-called sanitary box. This is the most irrelevant part of the house at all from the load-carrying perspective. This box is usually formed of it’s own type of concrete sheets, used nowhere else in the building, this kind of sheets can be easily cut out if you are rebuilding your apartment.
This kind of houses have been planned to survive a nuclear explosion nearby or very heavy explosion in any internal part of the house. Usually when an extremely heavy gas explosion takes place in one apartment, 1-3 concrete blocks can blow out and this still has a slightest effect on the overall stability of the building. Now, what is a real destroyer for this kind of building is, when several explosions occur on different floors in the same block. This would be, for example, if a gas leaked into several apartments and then exploded. Even worse, several apartments + a stairway.
One thing is sure – as the explosion took the block to the ground, it must have happened in the basement or the first floor and not just in one room. You could explode virtually anything on any floor, it could never take down the floors below it.
My wifes brother cooking sausages with welding torch again. Stefan is 40 mililitres short of full wodka bottle (if you understand what is meant!)
Funy – there is a german Emergency vehicle on picture Nr.5. “Rettungswagen”
Yes, I noticed that too. Also, one of the rescue personell is wearing a WW2-type german helmet, painted white, which is typical of German firemen and rescue personell. I wonder what the deal is there.
Disregard, I was wrong about the German helmet.
RIP
OMG this is so sad why is russia all about bad news?
Well, Russian is trying to to keep up with India when it comes to poverty, corrupt government, ignorance and filth. It isn’t easy. India has set very difficult standards. I doubt Russia will ever be as smelly, filthy and disgusting as India.
why are you always about bad news? Be an optimist. Doesn’t your country have optimist? So sad. We Slavs enjoy life how it is.
Yes, bless their souls may they rest in peace.