Media about the Ministry of Internal Affairs: How Odessa rescuers help people and survive the death of colleagues

29.03.2024 16:00

In March 2024, the air alarm sounded in Odessa more than 50 times. Almost every time it was followed by drones and missiles that attacked the city's infrastructure. Often, the enemy struck again — firing at emergency services workers, in particular rescuers.

This is stated in the material of the publication “Babel”.

So, recently, Russia fired a double missile strike on the private sector in Odessa. The second arrival occurred five minutes after the first, when rescuers and medics arrived at the scene. Two employees of the State Emergency Service were killed.

Babel editor Yuliana Skibitskaya went to Odessa to talk with rescuers who, despite constant attacks, continue to save lives.

On the night of March 2, Dmitry Popov, deputy chief of the fifth fire department in the Odessa microdistrict of the village of Kotovsky, was on duty. Around 00:35 there was an air alarm in the city. Dmitry took his department of rescuers to the bomb shelter. A group of several Shahed drones went to Odessa. Odessa residents are used to this - since the second half of February, Russians launch them almost every night.

Around the first night, the girl Dmitry, who also lives in the village of Kotovsky, heard a loud explosion. She works as a paramedic in a local ambulance — so she was waiting to be called to the scene. Dmitry himself at the same moment received a message from the dispatcher - the drone hit the house on Dobrovolsky Avenue.

“When I was driving, I didn't think there would be such destruction,” Dmytro recalls. He is tall, with dark short hair, answers unambiguously, calmly and clearly, although he later admits that it was this arrival that became the most difficult for him morally. He has been working as a rescuer since 2017.

The drone completely destroyed one of the entrances. People who were sleeping in the house heard a loud explosion and immediately saw a roar. We ran outside to help the victims. When rescuers arrived at the scene, there were already many people there. Most are half-clothed — the blow has trapped them in their beds.

“There was a lot of panic,” Dmytro recalls. “People tried to help, but in fact they only interfered. I had to scream to make everyone calm down.

At some point, under the reinforced concrete slab, Dmitry saw a woman. She was lying head down, but she was awake — she fell from the seventh or eighth floor and miraculously survived. She was picked up by an ambulance — the same one on which Dmitry the paramedic works.

The rubble was disassembled for more than a day. On the morning of March 3, rescuers tried to get a woman from under the plates and noticed a baby near her, which she covered with her hand. The woman is a soldier Tatiana Kravets, and the baby is her eight-month-old daughter Elizaveta. They, Tatyana's husband Oleg and two more of their children died. On March 5, they were buried. They are all in white coffins.

Rescuers pulled five people alive from under the rubble. Twelve were killed, five of them children.