Dealing with Floods and Russia

It has been a very interesting last week here in Bulgaria. First off, we had a problem at the park visitor center. Someone forgot to shut off the water to the building before everyone left for Christmas break, and the pipes on the second floor burst, flooding the whole building. It was just noticed the beginning of this week, and we have been working to get it cleaned ever since.

The thing about Bulgarian houses is that they are not built out of wood and drywall, but out of cement and brick, which during a flood is both a good and bad thing. The good thing is that they dont rot or get mold inside the walls, but the bad thing is that the water doesn't really drain out. When we first showed up at the house there was a good two inches of water sitting on the SECOND floor, and over the past few week that had trickled down and left a good inch of water on the first floor as well.

Then, to make it even more difficult, Bulgaria doesn't have proper equipment used to clean up a mess like this. ordinarily I would use a wet-vac and some industrial floor driers and have the place cleaned up in no time. Unfortunately, that stuff doesn't exist over here, so we had to sweep the water out of the building with brooms, and then get all the wood burning stoves in the house going full blast to dry up the moisture. For the last few days it has been my job to sit in the house and feed logs into the 3 fireplaces. Not the most exciting task, but gave me a chance to catch up on my leisure reading while sitting in front of a nice fire. So I guess I cant complain too much.

The other big news, for those of you that haven't been keeping up to date with the headlines, is the gas crisis going on in Europe. Because of a conflict between Gazprom and the Ukraine over gas shipments, Russia closed down its Ukrainian gas pipeline to Europe. Unfortunately, this one pipeline supplies approx one fifth of all the gas used in the entire continent, and for most of the Balkan countries, it is the only source. Bulgaria doesn't have any sizable reserves on hand, so as soon as the gas stopped coming from the Ukraine, the gas outages began. homes currently receive no gas, trains have been running with out heaters, schools are closing, heavy industrial complexes have been shut down and only a few necessary buildings are being supplied (I am assuming stuff like government and hospitals).

Fortunately, most homes here are heated with wood (as is the case here in Malko Turnovo) or electricity from some coal or oil powered plant. But there are still a lot of people with out heat, or hot water, and that's a big deal right now because Bulgaria is in the middle of some pretty cold weather. there is still a good six inches of snow on the ground here, and most likely a lot more the farther north you go. I'm hoping that this gets resolved within the next week, otherwise its going to be a long, cold winter.