Penza, 24 September 2015. PenzaNews. The Penza activists of All-Russian People’s Front (APF) took to monitor the situation in the dilapidated apartment building No. 158G, Molodaya Gvardiya street, in Kuznetsk of the Penza region.

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The APF activists, together with PenzaNews reporters, were brought to the scene and talked to the apartment building residents after receiving a complaint from the locals, who told them the house is 70% worn down.

“It all started when seven concrete slabs fell from the roof of our house in 2000 – right where the children were playing. Nobody got hurt, luckily. Since that time, our block of flats got caught in a spot of bad luck. They cut off our gas pipelines, now we have to cook on electricity. After that, the firemen had to practically live here – the old wiring broke at a sneeze. Fires sparked all through the house any day,” Elvira Bichurina, one of the people living in the apartment building, explained.

People are afraid of staying at home, she added.

“We are afraid of being buried under the roof of our own house. Its walls are cracking, and you can hear it particularly well at night. The house never underwent any capital repairs over the last 55 years. There were small repairs, during the Soviet age, but that was all. Somebody broke windows in our foyer, but the communal services failed to do anything except bricking them shut. The roof also has issues – it’s leaking, down to the second floor. When it pours, our men have to climb up there and seal it with PVE, but it still gets damp. Fungus began to crawl on the walls, and it destroys nearly everything. We have to clean up pieces of plaster in flats and corridors every morning,” the speaker said.

She also described the problems with water supply in the house.

“Don’t know who imagined that, but somebody power-wired the water drain, and now you get shocked every time you open the tap. Moreover, the ventilation ducts are blocked. And that’s not the end for our day-to-day problems,” Elvira Bichurina stressed.

According to her, the apartment building gets cold in winter, with flat temperature going as low as +14°C.

“We sleep and sit at hope in winter clothing. And the constant stench any season. When will this ever end?” the woman asked.

A total of 80 families in the house have to endure these issues every day, she added.

“I guess the local authorities will do something about it only when this block of flats turns into a mass grave,” Elvira Bichurina suggested.

In his turn, Alexander Sereda, head of the urban management company No. 4, pointed out that “no management company takes it” for service.

“All because its residents owe a great sum of money for bills,” he said.

The dilapidated state of the building can be spotted with a naked eye, an APF activist Roman Skitovich pointed out.

“Bricks fall out of brickwork, the foundation crumbles, the reinforcement bars are rusted, the entrances are rotten and infested with beetles. We do not want any of the residents ending up buried by rubble, do we. The resettlement issue must be resolved as soon as possible,” he stressed.

The first deputy head of Kuznetsk administration Vladimir Troshin commented on the visit for PenzaNews agency, saying the fat of the apartment building on Molodaya Gvardiya street, 158G is still undecided.

“We cannot include it in the capital repairs program, as there is a court process on enforcing the city administration to deem it a dilapidated building required for resettlement. In its turn, the [Kuznetsk] administration subcontracted a dedicated organization to conduct a full investigation of the house to make a verdict backed by facts. The results will come in late October,” the speaker said.

There were three investigations of the house before, he added.

“One was invited by the house residents themselves. A visual investigation, without any scanning of the construction. An expert looked at it and called it dilapidated. That’s now how it works. The second resulted in recommendations for capital repairs. There is an ongoing case to set the record straight. Once we get the results of the investigation, the court will decide the fate of the house,” the first vice-mayor concluded.