Only on October 25-27 there were five (!) Explosions in multi-storey buildings, and this is still far from winter.
Disappointing figures
There are a lot of problems with the operation of gas equipment.
In winter, the death toll in domestic gas-related emergencies increases by 20%.
According to the Ministry of Construction, over the past year in the Russian Federation there have been more than 80 thousand accidents (15 thousand accidents and 65 thousand less serious incidents), as well as 266 emergencies in connection with accidents at housing and communal services facilities. Domestic gas explosions also fall into this statistic.
By the way, the latest explosions that took place in different regions of our country eloquently reveal almost the entire spectrum of problems associated with domestic gas networks. For example, in the apartment of a residential building in Krasnogorsk, according to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, an explosion occurred during an unauthorized insert of gas equipment. The owner of the two-room apartment turned to an unknown hired worker to reinstall the gas stove. The tie-in was made without blocking the gas pipe. After the explosion, the worker who installed the gas equipment fled, the police are looking for him. And apparently he won't, so no one will be responsible for the explosion.
In Baltiysk, Kaliningrad region, gas exploded in an empty apartment. As a result of the explosion, a fire started, the residents from above rescued the children, throwing them out of the windows into the hands of passers-by. According to preliminary data from the Ministry of Emergency Situations, one person was injured.
The explosion of a gas-air mixture in a five-story building in Vidnoye could have been caused by improper use of gas equipment. An entire wall of the house collapsed, it was necessary to evacuate the residents of the whole entrance - 40 people, including 12 children.
On October 27, a powerful explosion occurred in a five-story residential building in Ulan-Ude. As a result of the incident, a wall collapsed in one of the apartments.
Meanwhile, these accidents at least did not lead to the death of people, which cannot be said about the larger explosion that happened in a five-story building in Naberezhnye Chelny on October 25. A young girl died there, six apartments were destroyed, three residents were hospitalized, two of them in serious condition. The tragedy occurred due to a gas leak in the apartment of a 70-year-old pensioner, although according to official documents, his living space was cut off from the gas back in 2010. The pensioner was registered at the local drug dispensary and was in conflict with a neighbor. He probably connected to the gas network illegally. Although the last inspection of his apartment in 2020 showed that the plug was in place. According to the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, the cause of the gas explosion in Naberezhnye Chelny was the deliberate actions of the owner of the apartment, a murder case was initiated.
If we analyze recent incidents, it becomes clear that the phrase "five-story building" and "human factor" lead to the appearance of the most explosive gas-air mixture.
Vice President of the Russian Gas Society, Professor of the St. Petersburg State Mining Institute Roman Samsonov confirmed that, as a rule, it is the ignorance of citizens that lead to tragedies: “Citizens do not want to let specialists into their apartments to check gas equipment. This is irresponsible behavior that leads to explosions. It is necessary to influence homeowners, ”the expert is sure.
General Director of LLC "NAANS-MEDIA", Associate Professor of the Department of International Commerce, RANEPA under the President of the Russian Federation Tamara Safonova believes that the main causes of accidents are unauthorized inserts of gas equipment, lack of necessary control over the state of gas distribution networks: “Replacement of equipment that is part of in-house and (or) in-house gas equipment should be carried out when the equipment service life set by the manufacturer expires. Measures to ensure safety when using and maintaining indoor and indoor gas equipment are regulated by the decree of the government of the Russian Federation of 05/14/2013 N 410.
"Nevertheless, outdated and counterfeit equipment is being used, which leads to accidents. The system of commissioned inspections of equipment by utilities could solve the problem of preventive identification of problem areas and replacement of outdated equipment", - said the expert.
HSE Associate Professor Stanislav Roginsky, in turn, he recalled the problem of formal diagnostics, when equipment checks are carried out very superficially: "The owner is simply asked whether there are problems with gas or not, and then they tick the box."
In addition, industry experts point to many other factors that lead to tragedies. First of all, this is a strong deterioration of gas supply systems, a lack of qualified specialists, redevelopment in apartments, plastic windows, the installation of which in houses with gas supply is prohibited, the laying of ventilation corridors, as well as the impoverishment of the population, leading to the use of gas stoves for heating the premises.
It is also noted that currently there is no specific organization responsible for the safe use of gas stoves.
There was an idea to place all responsibility on the gas suppliers. The bill on the control of indoor gas equipment was introduced to the State Duma about two years ago, and it has not yet been adopted.
In addition, the State Duma also has bills proposing to equip the housing stock with systems that record the excess of gas concentration in an apartment. To do this, it is necessary to introduce the mandatory installation of gas leakage sensors, as well as replace obsolete gas stoves. However, emergency automation is unlikely to be able to withstand the problem of drunks. As Sergey Pikin, Director of the Energy Development Fund, noted earlier, when equipping gas stoves with gas analyzers, the program will become useless if at least one of the apartments in the building does not have this equipment.
In January 2019, after the tragedies in Magnitogorsk and in the city of Shakhty in the Rostov Region, co-founder of the Guild of Gas Equipment Engineers Stanislav Mityushin When asked by NIK about who in Russia controls the installation and operation of gas equipment in the housing and utilities sector, he said that in most cases, in fact, nobody. “From the point of view of standards, the gas supplier should be monitored within the framework of the requirements of PP 549 and PP 410 and a special organization, the executor of maintenance work. But the reality is that the gas supplier and the special organization are one and the same person, so in most cases there is no independent control at all.
Rostekhnadzor (Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Nuclear Oversight of Russia) is currently not responsible for the gas consumption networks of residential buildings and low pressure gas pipelines. GZI also lacks the necessary competencies, nor sufficient staffing and authority. There is also no single, centralized technical regulation ", - said the expert.
He pointed out that, according to the law, there should be several inspections of gas equipment in residential buildings. “At least once a year in apartment buildings, work should be carried out on the maintenance of in-house (common house) gas equipment, including the tap in the apartment. Under the agreement with the MC / HOA, plus, it is necessary to carry out maintenance work on the gas equipment in the apartment (on the gas riser of the apartment, including gas-using equipment) annually under an agreement with the owner of the apartment. It should be emphasized separately: safety when using gas does not end with the maintenance of equipment or a gas pipeline. On the contrary, in most cases, safety is directly related to redevelopment, installation of non-standard window frames, blocking of ventilation and smoke removal channels, lack of air flow into the room due to the installation of doors and windows with seals. It's a complex. As of today, there are no requirements for the types and types of inspection of ventilation and chimney ducts, in principle! If the channel is clear, is it allowed? And if the reverse thrust? Or just lack of traction? " - asks Mityushin.
At the same time, he noted that the issue of legal or illegal replacement of equipment is very difficult: “Regulatory requirements are not uniform across the country, requirements for paperwork are sometimes unnecessary, the procedure is long-term and expensive. This greatly affects the desire of the apartment owner to properly arrange for the replacement of equipment. It is necessary to seriously simplify the procedure. "
Talking to the correspondent of "NiK" in October 2021, Mityushin emphasized that over the past time, no major changes in the maintenance of gas equipment in Russia have happened: "The problems with accidents are systemic, they do not have a quick solution," the expert said. He said that it was announced that all gas subscribers were inspected: “But there are 40 million subscribers in Russia. And if you carry out real diagnostics, then you need to spend 20 minutes for each apartment. There is simply no such number of specialists in the country, ”Mityushin explained.
He also confirmed that due to the impoverishment of the population, the replacement of outdated gas equipment is proceeding very slowly, and also people often try to heat their apartments with gas.
There are also questions to gas suppliers, namely, how much odorant is added to it: “If you add odorant to the gas in the right quantities, it becomes simply impossible to breathe with an explosive concentration of gas in the room. Thus, there are questions to the state, which does not regulate the issue of adding odorant to gas, ”the expert explained.
Touching upon the issue of the “human factor”, he noted that in houses, especially old ones, even if the subscriber is disconnected from the gas, it is impossible to isolate him from the gas infrastructure, since the gas riser still passes through the apartment: “We need a point approach to the housing stock. In some cases, houses of the old series need to be degassed, ”Mityushin said.
By the way, many experts say that gas should be removed from the housing stock, since this type of energy resource in apartment buildings is very dangerous. In particular, as the director of the Institute of Regional Problems said Dmitry Zhuravlev, They began to actively supply gas to apartment buildings in Soviet times in order to solve the problem of hot food for the population. In the 21st century, the government is no longer faced with such a task: “In many houses, the gas system is outdated, and it will not be possible to modernize it quickly. They patch holes in it, so accidents happen, ”the expert noted. He is sure that gasification should be avoided: “In connection with the development of high-rise construction, Moscow began to switch to electric stoves back in the early 70s of the last century. Over the past 50 years, there have been only two major accidents with electricity in the capital - in 1978, due to frost, the power grids could not cope with the increased load, and in 2005, when the heat caused accidents at substations.
At present, gas explosions, as a rule, occur in five-storey buildings, and this is the housing stock, the service life of which ended in the 80s of the last century ",
- reminded Zhuravlev.
The experience of mass gasification of apartment buildings is in Britain and the USA. In the EU countries, gas is usually used to generate electricity. Everywhere, the control of gas equipment is taken very seriously: residents are threatened with serious fines, even if they do not get acquainted with the safety precautions every year, and for not wanting to let inspectors into them, they can be evicted. Nevertheless, even there, gas annually becomes the reason for the “blowing up” of apartment buildings.
Therefore, gasification in cities should rather be abandoned and the domestic electric power industry should be modernized so that hot food for the population would be provided by safer electric stoves. Another approach is also possible: replace all plastic windows in five-story buildings with old wooden ones, then saving drafts will slightly improve the statistics of the Ministry of Emergencies. However, this method is unlikely to please the population.
FULL VERSION OF THE MATERIAL - IN THE MAGAZINE "OIL AND CAPITAL"