Earlier this week, a box I haven’t seen in over a year appeared in our office elevator.
The brown box is marked for emergencies, and includes water, cookies and diapers — in case you are trapped inside the elevator when the power goes out.
Electrical engineers had been able to come up with various plans to keep the #power on, but this week, they started coming up short, he said. Electrical imports from other countries can only do so much, and consumer demand went up due to a cold snap in #ukraine
Russian strikes destroyed the largest power plant in the Kyiv region last month; the Dnipro hydroelectric power plant has stopped producing energy; and various generation sites in Kharkiv have also been destroyed -- among many others that have been targeted in recent months.
While Ukraine is importing electricity from Poland, Romania and Slovakia, this will not compensate for the loss of generating capacity.
This has made emergency blackouts inevitable. All regions of Ukraine are now facing rolling power outages, the Energy Ministry of Ukraine said.
The Russian strikes and the damage will continue "as degraded Ukrainian air defense capabilities persist until US-provided air defense missiles and other Western air defense assets arrive at scale,” the ISW recently reported.
The Counteroffensive’s team has been hard at work planning for possible emergency scenarios: evacuation routes and methods, prolonged internet outages.
We need batteries, and sources of heat; we need emergency food and water; we need to be prepared to go days without power.
Myroslava laughed a little at my focus on preparedness. I am mapping out all sorts of worst case scenarios — fire, nuclear bombs, chemical attacks — a very American or Canadian mentality, she teased.
Ukrainians, she explained, simply grit their teeth and deal with the problems when they arise.
My mentality is one that’s been drilled into me through the military: two is one, and one is none.
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