The Kyiv office of Television Toronto was flooded late on January 20, the news outlet reported in a comment to the Institute of Mass Information.
The flooding was caused by a water supply pipe that runs outside the building bursting. The security alarm went off at night, signaling the flooding. A security company staff arrived at the office urgently despite the curfew and the ongoing air strike; by that time the water had already spread to the office.
At about two in the morning, the team officially contacted the emergency services. However, it became clear by the morning that the flooding was intensifying and waiting for help to arrive any longer was not an option. Then the media outlet’s management decided to evacuate the equipment by themselves.
“The office was waterlogged for about three days. The utilities were not coping, we had to pump it out on our own twice,” the team said.
All of the equipment, documents, and staff’s personal belongings were rescued.
“We managed to evacuate and rescue everything that was in the office: all the equipment, all the papers and reporting documents for the organisation’s entire history, as well as the personal belongings of our team. Not a single piece of equipment, not a single document, not a single thing was lost despite the flood and the nightly missile strikes,” Television Toronto reported.
The office was damaged and is now unusable. The scale of damage has not yet been estimated: the landlord and the insurance company are assessing it and addressing the repairs.
The team plans to stay in the office after it is restored. They are working remotely for now and use another organisation’s premises to film.
Previously, the Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid resulted in damage to the offices of Realna Hazeta (formerly Luhansk-based) and the Institute of Mass Information.