At least one person was killed and five injured Friday in a major fire at the Vuhlehirska Thermal Power Plant in the town of Svitlodarsk. The town is in Ukraine’s Donetsk region and the plant is a coal thermal plant.
The fire began in the plant’s second block that housed equipment for processing coal dust.
State emergency services have set up temporary water purification facilities and distributed portable heaters. One of the plant’s functions was to provide hot water and steam to heat homes.
The fire started around 3 PM and continued to burn into Saturday, destroying the plant’s four power-generating units. The first left the town’s 12,000 residents without heating, hot water and electricity. Patients in the town’s hospital were moved to a facility in the nearby town of Debaltsevo.
The fire was extinguished on Saturday.