The fire in the building occurred on the night of November 21, 2012. This was the second serious fire in this building and the largest in Kiev since the beginning of the year.
One of the victims of the fire - sculptor Alla Vysotskaya - says that she felt the approach of trouble a few hours before the fire.
“I had a vision. Before my eyes - worried frightened people running around with bags … - the woman sighs. “It happened a few hours later. I heard noise and rumbling, looked out the window and saw people running out of the entrance in panic. She woke up her husband, grabbed all the most valuable things and ran to bang at the neighbors' doors to get everyone out of the burning building.
The residents of the first three entrances suffered the most - their apartments were most flooded. The attic was completely burnt out, 8 apartments were badly damaged. Now water, gas and electricity are turned off in the whole house.
The house at 3 Mazepa Street has an interesting history. During the times of Kievan Rus, a road passed on this place, which connected Ancient Kiev and the residence of the princes, located near the Lavra. Much later, in the middle of the 19th century, the Pustynno-Nikolsky Monastery was built on this site, which was demolished in the 1930s.
“It was decided to build a dwelling house for the local military district on the site of the temple,” says the Kiev historian and writer Vitaly Kovalinsky. “The lodging was for the high command. The author of the project was the famous architect Iosif Karakis.
A residential building with 13 (!) Entrances designed by him in 1937 was very popular in Kiev. “House-plane” - this is how the people of Kiev called this building. From above, the structure resembles a liner, where the tail and engines are clearly visible.
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Some tenants, when the journalists came to the fire, said that the aura of the demolished monastery was taking revenge - different emergencies were happening in the building every now and then.
So, in the late 1980s, there was already a strong fire in it.
“It's just some kind of deja vu,” says a local resident Alla Vysotskaya, who has been living here for 30 years. For her prophetic gift, the neighbors call her clairvoyant. - Both then and now I had a vision that something was about to happen in the house. Before the fire, I suddenly felt dizzy, I saw people running around with knots, they darted, shouted, fled from the fire …
In both cases, the attic caught fire. Both then and now more than twenty fire-fighting vehicles arrived. And again more than fifty apartments were sooty and flooded with water. The roof burned down, the walls cracked … But this is an elite area, where the total cost of the damaged apartments is not less than $ 10 million.
The restoration will take five months, officials said. All this time, residents will live in other premises - some with relatives, some in hostels provided by the city. Several families were placed for a day in the neighboring hotel "Salut".
FIRE VERSIONS
The Ministry of Emergency Situations laboratory is still establishing the causes of the fire. The most likely version is considered to be a short circuit in the electrical wiring in the attic.