More than 16 residential buildings were completely destroyed by the blasts at the ammunition depot in Kalynivka and nearby villages in Vinnytsya Oblast, some 238 kilometers southwest of Kyiv, Vinnytsya City Council reported on Sept. 29.
More than 5,000 windows were broken and hundreds of roofs of houses were damaged, the report said.
Valeriy Koroviy, the head of the Vinnytsya Oblast Council, said during a city council meeting on Sept. 29 that the local authorities had to act fast to repair damaged property and houses of some of the 30,000 people evacuated on Sept. 26 and Sept. 27 from a 10-kilometer zone around the blast-stricken ammunition depot.
The ammunition depot was one of the biggest in Ukraine caught fire at about 10 p.m. on Sept. 26, and ammunition, shells and rockets soon started to explode.
“We must speed up repairs, as winter is coming,” Koroviy said.
Koroviy added that the villages of Pavlivka, Medivka, and Salnik along with some of the districts of Kalynivka itself had been most affected by the blasts.
Shells from the ammunition depot damaged not only houses but also two schools and a hospital.
On Sept. 29 Vinnytsya City Council allocated Hr 5 million for repairs to damaged property in the affected areas. Koroviy said he was very grateful.
“On Sept. 27 the government allocated Hr 100 million for repairs. But there are a lot of complicated and long, special procedures involved in getting budget money, so the additional Hr 5 million in aid is very much appreciated,” Koroviy said.
Koroviy also said that on Sept. 28 and Sept. 29 the authorities reopened highways and roads near the depot and started to restore gas and electricity supplies.
“People are returning to their homes,” Koroviy said.
Vinnytsya’s mayor, Serhiy Morgunov, said that besides providing money, he was planning to send public utility workers to Kalynivka to help locals repair property damaged in the blasts.
Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman inspected the affected areas of Kalynivka district from a helicopter on Sept. 29 and tweeted photos of the devastated depot.
“We will rebuild everything that was destroyed and repair everything that was damaged. I demand the rational spending from the local authorities. If I discover, that someone has stolen the money, that person will be found and punished,” Grossman, who was the mayor of Vinnytsya from 2006 to 2014, tweeted on Sept. 29.
Разом з головою ДСНС Миколою Чечоткіним оглянули з повітря місце пожежі в Калинівці. Ситуація контрольована, всі служби працюють злагоджено. pic.twitter.com/h2ZdUhdEwu
— Volodymyr Groysman (@VGroysman) September 29, 2017
