In Irkutsk, an ice block fell from a house roof onto a parked Mercedes in the IVVAIU area. The roof and windshield were damaged, but luckily no one was inside. The owner says he asked the HOA to remove the snow, but they say it had already been cleared and the problem is the design and attached awning. Now the owner plans to go to court, and residents must look up with caution.

Last weekend, an icy chunk fell onto an Irkutsk resident’s car. By a miracle, a serious accident was avoided — there was no one in the car at the time. It is known that this is not the first time snow has fallen from this roof. Negligence on the part of the utilities or carelessness on the part of the residents?
“Protect your cars and your heads,” this young man warns his neighbors living in the area of the IVVAIU town. Last weekend, an icy chunk fell from the roof of this building and landed straight on a Mercedes. The roof and windshield were smashed. When he saw what had happened to his car, the man says, he was outraged. Literally a couple of days before the incident, an icicle had fallen on him personally from the same roof.
Owner of the damaged car: “I contacted the HOA and asked them to clear the snow. It started warming up early this year — all decent people cleared the snow. To which they replied that there was no safety rope to secure the workers, so they wouldn’t be scared. I bought this rope and gave it to them. They said everything was fine, we’ll knock it off.”
Did they not have time to clear the snow, or were they being overly cautious again? We tried to get an answer to this question from the HOA board. They declined official comments here. However, they explained that snow has been cleared from absolutely all the roofs in the town. Only the notoriously unlucky Building 25 was left out: its roof is not like the others.
Vyacheslav Sytny, deputy chairman of the HOA: “The roof is like this. Here there’s a normal roof — everything has been cleared, but there, he says: ‘How am I supposed to clear it? There’s a fence on this side, and on the other side a four-meter canopy has been built by the store
— But they used to clear it somehow before, didn’t they?
They cleared it last year, but there wasn’t this canopy then. And the store has already protected itself: today they ran up, brought a letter saying ‘Clear the snow...’, but it doesn’t say where to clear it to. Because they have a sign, and if we clear it there, nothing will be left of it”
Despite the fact that the injured man claims to have negotiated with the utilities, here they say they heard about the incident involving falling ice chunks only today for the first time. They ask a counterquestion: why, then, park a car in such a dangerous place at all? City authorities cannot intervene in the situation or punish anyone, explaining that the area is departmental property.
It seems the proceedings over the dented Mercedes are only just beginning. The car owner intends to go to court, while HOA representatives plan to conduct their own investigation. It is still unclear who will pay for the damaged car. As for the residents of Building 25 on Yadrintsev Street, all they can do is walk through the courtyard carefully and with their heads held high.