The City of Kyiv has a problem. It has a deadline to meet and time is not expanding to fill the work available.
August 24 is the big-deal, no-holds-barred, show-it-all-off celebration of 10 years of independence, a red letter day for all of Ukraine. But July 12 it looked to turn into a day of mourning.
It all started in January, when the tent city of anti-Kuchma protestors was abruptly torn down and the heart of downtown was torn up. At the time, there was a widespread impression that Maidan Nezalezhnosti, which was a lovely town square with fountains and trees and grass and thousands of users of all ages, in all times and all seasons, was being closed down for political reasons.
Every weekend since independence, thousands of Kyivans and visitors wander up and down the pedestrians-only main drag in sunshine or rain, listening to street musicians, laughing at mimes, shmoozing hand-in-hand with their honeys, or just people-watching. And most of them end up at the Maidan at some point or another, buying ice cream, looking over Ukrainian books, casettes and videos, or cooling their tootsies in the fountain.
The Maidan and the square opposite are also the traditional location of fabulous live concerts of every kind of music, from folk to rock to spiritual, with up to 350,000 crowding Khreshchatyk to listen and watch on oversized screens. On May Day, on Kyiv Days, on Independence Day, and half a dozen other holidays during the year. And most such holidays are topped off with fireworks for the whole city to see.
But last fall, this popular downtown area also turned into a rallying point. Shocked at the disappearance and apparent murder of a young journalist – possibly with the collusion of top officials – thousands of Ukrainians began to express their opinions publicly after 10 years of post-soviet silence. The protests developed a pro-Ukrainian agenda and snowballed to the point where tens of thousands showed up and a small tent city was erected.
When everything was abruptly boarded up and construction began, the official story was that the entire area, as well as the square across the road, was being renovated with suitably grand architectural elements. Apparently, this includes a huge obelisk and an arc of pillars, like a Greek temple.
There was no public debate. The public was never even shown any drawings of what their favorite weekend hang-out was going to look like in the future. Besides, obelisks and parthenons are the pompous symbols of power of two long dead civilizations. Most Ukrainians might well ask, “Why do we need an obelisk or pillars? We like our 20th century fountains and trees just fine, thank you.”
So now, Kyivans and visitors can top off their weekend wanders down Khreshchatyk with a view of The Pit. Shored up with rows of twined logs along its steep sandy edges and narrow access roads, the construction site has an opening at the bottom of vul. Borysa Hrinchenka where you can look over the site, sort of like looking over Grand Canyon, except it doesn’t feel as safe. Opposite the public overlook, construction workers lean on a similarly flimsy-looking cable guard-rail.
And sure enough, on Thursday, the worst happened. The foundation under the monument to St. Michael collapsed and seriously injured one worker. 40 tonnes of dirt and debris went down, along with a 60-tonne concrete slab. The location of the collapse was swiftly covered up, the media denied access, and officials claim there were no deaths, although they were not able to lift the slab initially to check underneath.
Then, after the slab was broken up with jackhammers, for some reason they decided to do the removal in the dark, where no one could see. And on Saturday morning, a priest went around the site with a chorus in tow, singing prayers and blessing everything in sight with a censor.
The public is left wondering. Were they just reassuring the workers that the site would be safe henceforth? Were they exorcising devils? Or were they praying for the soul or souls of some dead construction workers whose bodies were removed in the night?
There are a lot of reasons for everybody to be worried about what is going on in Kyiv. A frenzy of serious construction and reconstruction has been going on for months. But most of it only began in mid-March and much of it involves underground shopping malls and other serious structures at major intersections in Kyiv.
At best, with cutting-edge approaches and machinery, this kind of building takes time. With the quality of both the equipment and the labor being used in Kyiv, as well as the incredibly tight schedules, the situation is a time-bomb. Thursday’s accident could be just the start.
Even if everything is build on time, what are the risks for later disasters, if corners are being cut and materials not properly prepared? It’s bad enough that Kyivans have lost their favorite fountains. What are they going to feel if some of them lose their lives when a roof caves in on one of these underground malls because the concrete didn’t cure long enough. Or when a wall comes down because cheap materials were used for the support structures. Or when a floor collapses because an underground stream suddenly swollen from too much rain shifts the sandy soil?
Mayor Omelchenko, please see this as a warning. If no one died this time, don’t wait until someone does. Take a look at these wonderful, ambitious projects of yours and make some cold, hard decisions about what can be done – and what will simply have to be postponed past Independence Day. Please, risk losing some face, so that your citizens don’t risk losing some lives. •
–from the notebooks of Pan O.
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