Another energy related accident occurred in Sochi a couple of days ago. I didn’t want to write about it then because news reports were giving conflicting information and it didn’t look like a major accident. As turned out it was, but certainly not as big as what happened in Sochi recently. Here’s what happened this time.

February 22nd an accident occurred on a Maikop-Sochi gas pipeline. As the specialists were working on the problem they had to shutdown all city’s boiler-houses (which for the people meant no heat or hot water), and on February 24th afternoon they had to cut of gas to the public. This affected everyone who is using natural gas from Dagomys to Adler (that’s most of the city). By the end of the same day works on a pipeline were completed, and few hours later all boiler-houses were operating. Heat and hot water came back, but gas was still not coming. That meant everyone started using electrical devices to cook which in turn affected city’s electric system, and several parts of the Central district were left without electricity.

Right now most of these problems are fixed, though, as many as 60 000 people still do not have gas. Apparently after works like this, the restoration of the gas flow must be controlled by the specialists, because if air made its way into the pipes and mixed with gas, it potentially creates an explosive mix. To get every single house to get gas back will now take no less than two weeks. 35 specialists from neighbouring cities are coming to join 150 local specialists to speed up the process.