Moscow's decaying heating system claimed another victim this week when a 45-year-old women died after falling into a pit of boiling water created by a burst hot-water pipe.
Marina Yarova was walking her two dogs Wednesday morning on a vacant lot near her house on Ulitsa Tukhachevskogo in northwest Moscow when the ground gave way under her feet, eyewitnesses said Friday. Yarova was dead by the time emergency services arrived.
"People were trying to help [pull her out] with a dog leash, but that did not work," said a woman who said she was Yarova's friend and gave her name only as Galina. "She was screaming."
"When finally she was pulled out by the Moscow rescue service, it was too late," Galina said, adding: "And how could it have been otherwise if the temperature in this hole was at least 80 degrees [Celsius]."
Yarova's death is the second such incident to take place in Moscow during a time period of less than 20 days. Feb. 22, Armen Mkrtunyan, 9, suffered horrific burns when he too fell into a pool of water resulting from a burst pipe.
The young boy suffered burns over 80 percent of his body and later died in hospital from his injuries. His father, Vladimir Mkrtunyan, who dived in to rescue his son, was hospitalized with 40 percent burns.
In a separate incident this year, the cellars of two shops on Rusakovskaya Street in northeast Moscow were flooded by boiling water from burst pipes. Four people were injured.
Buildings in Moscow, as in other Russian cities, are heated by a municipal heating network. Steam and boiling water travel through a web of underground, often badly maintained pipes, which link central heating plants with apartments, businesses and other buildings.
Back at the site of Yarova's death, Galina said that the lot of wasteland where the accident occurred is favored by locals for walking their dogs. "We've been coming here every day for the past six years," she said. "So at any time it could have been anyone of us falling into this pit.
Alexander Arsyonov, a senior official with the heating division of Mosenergo, the city structure which runs the heating system in the capital, was at the scene of the accident Friday afternoon.
"We do not know yet what happened here. No pipes have burst here. And March 10 we inspected this particular section. Everything was fine," Arsyonov said. He said that it was still unclear how a leak could have turned such an extensive area of ground into a steaming swamp so quickly.
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