Our winter

The snow is slowly starting to melt and this is bringing new hazards - falling icicles:
Excerpt from the Kyiv Post :

It’s the season of falling ice, a perilous time in Kyiv - Yuliya Popova

. . . The snowfalls have been more than brief flurries this winter. And the layers of packed snow and ice have brought their own hardship: One person has been killed and thousands have been injured on Kyiv’s slippery streets.

Until the spring thaw, Kyivans are warned to walk as far from buildings as they can and to look up so as to get out of the way of falling icicles and ice blocks.

Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky, long thought to be on vacation somewhere warm, even snapped into action. He asked citizens to alert him about dangerous ice-block formations on the city’s roofs and promised to remove them – pronto. . . ." I appeal to all Kyivans not to be indifferent and to call me personally 1551 and report icicles,” he said on Feb 19. . . . ..

For some people, however, this wake-up call came too late. Pensioner Galyna Zinyuk, 78, was one of them. She went out for a walk with her husband on Feb 21 to the Park of Glory in the Pechersk district and was hit by a brick of ice. It dropped from the roof of the National State Transport University and landed right on Zinyuk’s head. According to witness reports, she died on the spot. . . . .City authorities called a few emergency meetings to respond to the icy crisis. “All the dangerous places near buildings should be sealed off with warning tapes, and I particularly request that Kyiv residents walk around such zones,” Chernovetsky said.

Municipal workers followed the orders, cordoning off many pavements with red-and-white tape. Cars parked along curbs took a good share of the remaining walking space, leaving people the choice of venturing under roofs or dodging speeding traffic.

“We receive 30 to 35 people daily,” said Yevhen Kasyan, a doctor in the Shevchenko accident clinic. It’s twice more than last year, he said, and "there are more fractures than before.”

There are still many icicles in the city and, with the weather getting warmer, they would be showering down in the blink of an eye. “If a five-kilo ice block falls from the fourth floor, it hits the ground with the power of more than 75 kilos,” said Nikolayev.

Anxious citizens say it is time for business owners and city officials to do their math and remove the dangerous ice clusters before it is too late.