Heroes without weapons: Vitaly Shakhov — rescuer from Popasna
Vitaly Shakhov joined the ranks of the State Emergency Service after serving in the army and passed the 16-year path from an ordinary rescuer to the head of the city fire and rescue department. Now he heads the fire department of the city of Popasna in the Luhansk region.
The first thing the rescuer remembers about all these without a small seven months of struggle is the day of March 2. Then, during the next exit, a woman ran to Vitaly and said that a residential building in which a young woman and three children live had been hit on a neighboring street.
“Near the rubble of the destroyed house, I began to shout: “Who is alive!”, but no one answered, - Vitaly recalls. “Later I saw a woman's hand in the middle of the rubble. There was no more pulse... We began to rake the rubble, looking for children, calling them. Thank God, we pulled out two frightened but alive and unharmed children, and the third child was nowhere to be found... I reproached myself because I thought I had not checked the ruins thoroughly enough. But then it turned out that the third child was in the shelter. When I found out about it, a stone fell from my heart.”
From that day on, the total shelling of Popasnaya began: the Russians leveled the city with the ground...
Brigades of rescuers left just under shelling: they evacuated people to bomb shelters, delivered humanitarian aid, extinguished fires. The fire engines, the firefighter says, were a target for the artillery of the “liberators”.
When the street fighting began, the water supplies for firefighting were exhausted, and the nearest reservoir was nine kilometers away, Vitaliy called the management and asked for permission to evacuate. Then he gathered a team of rescuers and reported that they were being transferred to Pavlograd, to which he heard the unanimous response of the boys: “Where part, there we are.”
“At 36 years old, I don't consider myself old. However, 70% of our personnel are boys under the age of 25. These are real fighters, professionals and patriots who have repeatedly proved their courage in the most critical situations. I was very lucky with them, because none of the 45 rescuers betrayed the oath of allegiance to Ukraine and remained in the occupation. It is my honor to serve together with such young people,” Vitaly said.
And today Vitaliy Shakhov dreams of rebuilding Popasna, which was liberated by Ukrainian soldiers: “I am ready to live in a tent and dismantle the rubble of my hometown with the boys around the clock, so that only a yellow-blue curtain will lie over it.”
We are convinced that it will be so! Thanks to such people as the rescuer from Luhansk region Viktor Shakhov
State Emergency Service of Ukraine
