Fire at the three lids

This area next to the railway lines is home to a small community of people living in huts built around the pipes which carry hot water around the city for the central heating. In Romania during Communist times people didn't have their own centrall heating systems but were connected to a city wide network. This system has advantages and disadvantages to the community in general but a major advantage to the homeless of Romania and other eastern European countries is that it provides them with free heating and even hot water in places where the old pipes leak a little. However, sometimes there are accidents and someone gets badly burned either from leaning against the pipes or by the hot water in places where there are leaks.

This particular community have had their huts all burned down several times during the last few years. A couple of days ago it happened again. As far as we can gather, the cause of the accident was a young child playing with a candle. As the huts are made from wood and other flammable materials the fire spread quickly, leaving the whole community without homes.


There are at present 7 families in this wee community, four with young children. we took some basic groceries, toiletries and what we could manage to put together, as well as socks and underwear but at present we are very low on clothing and have no blankets, sleeping bags or duvets left. Fortunately the weather is getting warmer and until next winter the need isn't so great.

There are several small communities like the "three lids" and their future prospects are not good. Many of them have moved to Arad from other counties and so their ID cards are based elsewhere which means that the Arad local authorities are not obliged to help them, the responsibility lies with their home county. Also, those working within the local authorities feel that they have more than enough homeless or almost homeless people of their own to try to help without having to stretch the already stretched services even further.

As a small charity working here in Arad with the poor and homeless we obviously would like to help families such as these and have requested a piece of land from the council on which to build 6 very small but adequate houses. As yet we don't have the land, neither do we have the funding, we don't even know how we would go about choosing which families receive a house but it is nevertheless a project close to our hearts.