May I Borrow Your Shower? Ukraine Braces for Winter Cold
Since Kiev’s authorities started turning off communal hot water supplies last month to save natural gas, people with their own boilers have found unwashed friends on the doorstep armed with a towel and a bar of soap.
Yulia Mikulska, an accountant from the Ukrainian capital, had gone weeks without a hot shower before she visited her brother’s summer house, which is fitted with an electric water heater. “I finally got to wash myself like a human being!” the elegant 38-year-old said.
Ukrainians are resorting to “wash visits” along with school closures and DIY insulation as the nation of 45 million braces for a winter without enough gas. Authorities, already fighting an insurgency in the east, are scrambling to build stockpiles in a country where temperatures can drop to 20 below zero Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit) after Russia, the main supplier, stopped shipments in June.
Gas storage is now about half-full at 16.3 billion cubic meters, according to data from the state-run energy company NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy. Even combined with Naftogaz’s domestic production, that’s not enough to cover the country’s needs during the coldest months.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-17/may-i-borrow-your-shower-ukraine-braces-for-winter-cold.html
