Kostiantyn Gavrilescu lost his wife and house during last year’s explosion at the gas station, which destroyed Krevedia. Seven months later, a new home is slowly taking shape on the same scorched earth. He released a volume of his poems and is currently preparing an autobiography. A cat keeps him company.

• Daria Gheorghe is a third-year student at the Faculty of Journalism and Communication at the University of Bucharest. This report was made as part of the “Narrative Journalism” seminar.

On August 26, 2023, employees of the gas station of the “Flagas” company perform their daily work near the filled fuel tanks. It was a hot day. An explosion occurred at around a quarter past seven in the evening. First. An orange cloud hangs in the air, releasing gaseous fire arrows about 100 meters away. For the first time, the house of some local residents with a cardboard roof caught fire, as did the garage of Konstantin Gavrilescu. Both light up instantly. Soon general chaos and the struggle for survival begins.

– Well, our boys!

Konstantin Gavrilescu takes a hose, fights the flames for several minutes, and then a car jumps into his eyes. His house is surrounded by a fence with a gas station. First, he goes to Janie, who was working in an office in a small house, and asks her to hide in the garden as soon as possible. He takes the key, gets into the car and drives to the exit from the commune, where local residents have already started taking him, fearing that they might be harmed.

Konstantin Gavrilescu returns and runs her to the back garden, where he was supposed to meet Yeni, but does not find her in the designated place. Crazy with fear, he rushes home, but on the way he meets firefighters who have already evacuated people from houses. She scolds him for breaking the rules and putting himself and them in danger. Out of breath, he explains the situation to them, and they are the ones who carry his wife out of the house. After about 20 minutes, the sky over Krevedia lights up again.

“Well, our boys! All our people are there,” shouted one of the firefighters. Fire, cries for help, general chaos, instinctive struggle for survival. A neighbor opposite the source of the explosion had a heart attack when he saw his wife on fire, burnt from head to toe. It is a race against time with life. Rescuers, journalists, residents, victims, people desperately run as far as possible from the source of the explosion. Save yourself if you can.

Konstantin managed only to take a pack of his wife’s cigarettes, a lighter, a chair and a towel from the house so that she could sit down when they arrived safely in the field.

The third explosion, the last and strongest one, occurred about 15 minutes later. The wreckage of the tank was thrown even at a distance of 600-700 meters from the gas station that ignited the commune, the prosecutor’s office later showed.

Konstantin Gavrilescu and his wife were in the field when the last explosion occurred. They are knocked to the ground by a strong wind. Zhenya is dressed in a summer dress and has serious burns on a third of her body.

In just a few fractions of a second, a sense of panic and uncertainty gripped everyone in Crevedia. People try to escape, then firefighters fight the flames. Kravedia unexpectedly finds itself on the map of national disasters.

This is what the place looked like in November 2023, after the land was cleared of the burnt remains of the former house. Photo: HotNews

Library with 3500 books

Konstantin Gavrilescu, who is now 68 years old, almost always lived in a house in Krevedia. He moved there with his parents when he was 2 years old. There are two buildings in the yard – a larger house, for living, and a smaller one, located behind, for guests. There is also a garage, cellar, winter firewood shed and gardening tools in the back yard.

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Later, a library with more than 3,500 books, inherited from the last three generations of the family, in huge numbers, lined the entire wall in front of the living room, became a valuable asset of the house. In the middle, a table awaits guests to flip through a book or read a poem written by Konstantin Gavrilescu on one of the free pages of the books already in the library. Ideas pass through his head, then he turns them into poems, amidst everyday problems. He stayed in Bufta for a while, but a few years ago he returned to his childhood home in Crevedia, after divorcing his first wife.

Konstantin Gavrilescu describes himself as an interesting person and a fighter. In the village, she is called “Ms. Kostel”. He was interested in science from an early age, he graduated from the Faculty of Automation. He is an engineer, worked at Electrica, but always understood the importance of literature. He started writing and even has his own magazine with his now wife Janie. He is also writing a novel about his life, among the many poems he scribbles on the edges of books in the library, poems about love, nature, insects, rain or sarmal, in different versions that mean something different each time. He describes himself as a person who has no vices, never lacks money, but loves to invest and indulge in his little pleasures. He did not shy away from trying them all in his life. In high school, he flirted with acting and dreamed of being like Alain Delon. For a long time he also painted, played table and outdoor tennis. He was very fond of reciting with Eminescu.

At the garden market

He met his second partner, Janie, 11 years ago at a book launch. Gavrilescu says they have common topics of conversation, respect each other and help unconditionally. The fruit of their love is also the magazine “Amprentele sufletului”, with “everything”, which they launched together, due to their shared passion for literature and culture. “Perhaps, fate brought us together precisely because we are soul mates. Love is the most tender feeling, the most beautiful form of the soul, it can be for one person, for anything. I love many things, this means that I am rich,” says Kostiantyn Gavrilescu about Jeni and love.

When Janie sends him “to the market” for vegetables and herbs for soup, Nea Costel actually leaves the house and brings him healthy ingredients from the garden where she works every day: parsley, onions, seasonal vegetables, goji or figs are just a few of the natural products , which decorate their table every day. And the smell of rose bushes is amazing as soon as you step into the yard. The garden is surrounded by carefully grafted fruit trees. The food is ready, it smells like home.

Kostiantyn Havrilescu’s wife, Yeni, on New Year’s Eve in a hotel room. They lived there after the explosion and were on vacation. Konstantin Gavrilescu still lives in a hotel room. Photo: personal archive

House of ashes

More than six months after the disaster in Krevedia, only charred shadows of the past and memories of a home that will never be the same remain in the yard of Konstantin Gavrilescu’s house. A powerful burst of explosions in Krevedia completely burned his house and all valuables, garage and garden equipment in the yard.

In November, when he first set foot on the charred yard, he felt hopeless, like a stranger in a nightmare from which he hoped to wake up soon. He got out of his car after first smoking a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes to build courage.

After a long chain of errors and negligence of the authorities, on the evening of August 26, 2023, the gas station in the yard of the “Flagas” company exploded three times. Six people died, 57 were injured, some of them were also transferred to burn hospitals in Europe. 97 buildings were completely or partially destroyed. Residents of the area were evacuated after waking up to a nightmare during the night.

The station, which belonged to Ionuts Doldurea, the son of the PSD mayor of Caracal, was fined several times by the Emergency Situations Inspectorate for non-compliance with fire safety measures, only to be closed later in September 2020. The activity was suspended, however, only on paper. The illegal activities of the company continued without problems until the moment of the tragedy, right under the noses of the authorities.

Local residents of Krevedia say that they complained about this in vain. Three criminal cases have been opened, the investigation is difficult. The owners of the station, which operated without a permit, Jonuc Doldurea and Cosmin Stianga, were previously arrested on September 6 for willful destruction leading to the disaster. Four months later, the judges chose a milder measure – house arrest, and in February 2024 they were taken under judicial control.

A tree in a hotel room

The winter holidays were sadder than ever. After the explosion and until recently, in March, Konstantin Gavrilescu and Yeni lived in a hotel in Krevedia. They felt “strangers in a prison cell where you just walk around and eat.” Not wanting to let this tradition die, they bought a Christmas tree and decorated it together in their hotel room where they lived for over 7 months. Their daughter Raluka, her husband and little niece stole a few smiles from them.

The family of engineer Konstantin Gavrilescu was one of the most affected in Krevedia. Nea Costel escaped with minor burns, but Jena needed 32 days in the hospital, 21 of which were spent in the ATI unit. The recovery was difficult, her husband says. Although he initially recovered, his physical and emotional condition gradually deteriorated.

Zhenya died in March.

The company “Flagas” paid the hotel expenses for the accommodation of the victims in Krevedia and undertook to restore all the houses destroyed by the explosions. Jonuts Doldurya knew Kostyantyn Gavrilescu for many years, says the engineer, they were just neighbors, they chatted over coffee from time to time, advised each other and helped when needed. At one point, he even offered to buy Nea Costel a new house in exchange for her property to expand his business. However, the GAZ neighbor did not think twice and refused. “Nea Costele, I will make you a palace!”, Gavrilescu says he promised her Doldurea after the explosion.

Kostyantyn Havrilescu’s new house, built from scratch. Photo: personal archive

“Everywhere I go, I think it’s Janie, but it’s not Janie”

Approximately seven months after the disaster, after the defendants were taken under the measure of judicial control, not the palace, but the new house of the Church was erected and began to take shape. He was promised that on May 1 he would receive the key and be able to move into his new home. However, he is still weighed down by a sense of sadness, because from now on he will live alone, with only a stray cat that appeared out of nowhere in the yard to keep him company. But he says that Zhenya is still with him. “Jenny’s upstairs watching over me,” he says. They look forward to meeting again one day. The new house is being built according to the model conceived by his partner.

“For now, it’s a wound that’s weighing on me. Wherever I go, I think it’s Jeni, but it’s not Jeni,” says the engineer.

He was impressed by the solidarity of the people. Literally a week after the tragedy, a friend told him that posters about the restoration of the library had been put up in the area, people had made donations and had already collected 1,000 books.

Another man, who had seen the incident on TV, came to the door with a van, with new appliances, a TV, a washing machine, clothes and a wall of new books carefully boxed. It will have a richer library than before. Nea Kostel donated volumes from her library. Now he believes that “what you give comes back.”

In March, he released a new collection of poems called “Din noian de amintiri”, and he still has a lot to write about his own novel, autobiography, and the story of his life. He plans to write until the end, when he can no longer hold a pen in his hand. “I firmly believe that God loved us. I think he said that we haven’t finished our work.”