How to avoid getting into a puddle

According to Oleksandr Mazurchak, the first former deputy head of the Kyiv City State Administration, in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine, sewer collectors have reached the end of their service life and pose a significant threat. Failures over the underground utilities occur quite often. The provoking factor is natural disasters. According to Viktoriia Yakovleva, the information policy advisor to the chairman of the board of Kyivvodokanal, 72 collector failures were recorded in the sewer network in 2010, 277 accidents were recorded in 2011, and 231 soil subsidence occurred in the first six months of 2012. Back then, in the summer of 2012, Kyivvodokanal claimed that after the August rains, the city was on the verge of a man-made disaster. “Today, more than 600 km of Kyiv’s sewerage network is fully depreciated and in a state of emergency. It is possible that damage may occur in any part of the city, at any address, at any time,” commented Andriy Bilyk, Kyivvodokanal’s Deputy General Director for Technical Affairs. The expert noted that it will be dangerous to walk or drive in Kyiv in winter, as you can fall underground.

This year’s heavy snowfall has complicated an already difficult situation. Only 0.2% of the snow has been removed since it fell on March 29. According to the head of the Kyiv City State Administration, Alexander Popov, the remaining 50 million tons of snow will soon become water. Accidents and flooding are inevitable. As the head of the KCSA reported, utilities have been tasked with bringing pumps to full readiness to pump out water. Popov emphasized that if necessary, such pumps will be purchased additionally. It is not yet clear whether modern, efficient equipment will be used and what kind of equipment will be chosen.

High-capacity mobile pumping stations will be able to localize the accident. Last season, Kyivvodokanal used such equipment at the Pushcha Voditsa 2 pumping station. Back then, Gorman-Rupp pumps demonstrated their capabilities. The specialists were impressed with the equipment. “We must pay tribute to the self-priming pumps of the Dalgakiran supplier,” said Vitaliy Kelvich, Deputy Head of the Sewerage Operation Department of Kyivvodokanal. – “When choosing equipment, you should focus on equipment for which service stations are guaranteed to work and spare parts are always available. Then these pumps will work. Dalgakiran pumping stations meet these requirements.” Gorman-Rupp diesel mobile pumping stations can be installed at the edge of the pit and pumped out through hoses thrown into the hole. Dalgakiran specialists note that the ability to quickly reprogram the pump at the work site allows you to change its performance by 1.5-2 times. The only thing that confuses utilities is the cost of high-quality equipment. At the same time, they note that it is no longer possible to do without high-performance pumps that are resistant to the chemical composition of wastewater liquids in megacities. So far, Gorman-Rupp equipment is seen as the best choice for emergency response. Perhaps in the near future, emergency vehicles with high-quality pumping equipment from Gorman-Rupp will appear on the streets of Kyiv. And if you never see them, you should know that they simply did not have time to buy them before the world drowned.