Gas crisis revives memories of communist era in Bulgaria

(SOFIA) - Bulgarians were cold and angry Wednesday as the country found itself without Russian gas supplies for a second day owing to the Russia-Ukraine dispute, reviving memories of communist-era power shortages.

"The radiators are barely warm at all, there's no hot water. I'm having to warm up water in a pan to bathe the baby," says Martina Tocheva as she pushed a pram through a snow-covered park in the Bulgarian capital.

"We are living in the 21st century, aren't we?"

Another mother, Yana Stamenova, said the first thing she did was buy an electric heater.

"They're telling us to cut back on consumption but my two-year-old girl woke me up at 3:00 am crying with cold and I don't know how to keep her warm," she says.

A complete cut early Tuesday caught Bulgaria -- which is almost entirely dependent on Russian gas -- off guard and authorities are having to tap into the country's single storage facility, which currently holds around 600 million cubic metres of gas. Estimates vary but experts calculate those reserves could last for up to 110 days.

Gas-fired heating plants, which supply approximately a quarter of the 7.6-million population with heat and hot water, immediately cut back.

Pipeline failures and the technical switch from gas to oil left thousands of households in the cities of Varna and Burgas on the Black Sea without any heating at all.

As people rushed to buy electric heaters, authorities launched numerous appeals on state radio and television to limit electricity use so that the grid would not be overloaded and cause blackouts.

While Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev has declared schools, kindergartens and hospitals a priority for gas, 68 schools had to be closed Wednesday after arctic temperatures outdoors saw classrooms to drop below 18 degrees Celsius (64 Fahrenheit).

"It's as if we're under siege. We hoisted a blanket over our window for better insulation and we dug out our candles and lanterns," said pensioner Darina Georgieva.

In communist times and during the first few years after communism collapsed in 1989, Bulgarians faced regular electricity rationing, with power switched on and off for a couple of hours during the day, causing many people to joke at the time that Bulgaria resembled a giant disco.

Economy and Energy Minister Petar Dimitrov took up the image again on Wednesday, saying: "We won't allow the country to become a disco club again."

Some people were putting on a brave face.

"Let's look on the bright side: heating and electricity rationing will bring families into the same room and unite them around the single candle. We might even see a rise in the birthrate," joked one Internet blogger.

"We survived with one hour of electricity per every three hours and lived through severe water cuts in the 1990s. We'll survive this, too," said beautician Lina Tsaneva.

But others lashed out at the government for allowing Bulgaria to be wholly dependent on Russian gas via Ukraine with no access to any alternative sources or routes.

"It is absurd that Bulgaria is one of the few countries in Europe to be completely dependent on Russian gas. How is it possible that no government has found an alternative 20 years after the fall of Communism," said university professor Elena Ganeva.