A request to publicize the matter came from Mr Norbert. In an email to the editorial office, he wrote:

I would like to draw attention to the negligence and lack of awareness of the seriousness of the situation on the part of MZGM in Bolesławiec. This concerns an apartment on Opitza Street. In this apartment [...] on February 3, 2009, two women were fatally poisoned—probably by carbon monoxide. I read about it on your website. As it happens, I have now been given this apartment. The plumbing and electrical installations, the doors and a few other things were replaced. A tiled stove was even built anew.

The stove builder probably lit some newspaper to check the draft. And that was it. Because when I looked inside the stove for the first time, I saw only newspaper ash and its charred remnants. Unfortunately, the handover report did not include even a chimney inspection.

Since January 4, I checked three times how the stove burned. Each time, smoke blew from the ventilation grille in the kitchen. On January 29, I lit the stove properly with coal and—as I was not particularly surprised—the smoke was still billowing from the grille. I reported this to the fire service. They arrived, carried out an inspection, and ordered the stove to be extinguished immediately and the chimneys to be checked. They also noted that, for the time being, the premises were unfit for habitation.

I am very surprised that, after such a tragedy as the one that happened there, no lessons were learned and that such an apartment is handed over to subsequent tenants.

Mr Norbert’s family had been waiting for an apartment for four years. On Monday, February 1, our reader received a letter from the fire service. The document states: “During the measurements, the presence of carbon monoxide at a level of 90 ppm was detected” (the maximum permissible CO concentration is 20 ppm). After the stove was extinguished and the apartment ventilated, the carbon monoxide concentration fell to 6 ppm.

We asked Piotr Woch, deputy director of the Municipal Housing Management Authority, to comment on the matter. “We do not manage this building; it is administered by TBS,” the deputy head of MZGM informed us.

“MZGM owns this apartment, while we are responsible for the common areas of the building,” explains Jerzy Łacina, a property technical services specialist at the Bolesławiec Social Housing Association. “On February 1, an employee of the Municipal Housing Management Authority reported to me that there was no ‘draft’ in the stove located in this very apartment. She also said that the stove had been rebuilt. We had not known about this before. MZGM is not obliged to inform us about such matters.

At the request of a TBS employee, a chimney sweep dealt with the matter. He determined that the chimney outlet needed to be extended by one meter. The work was completed on February 3.

“If I had not checked the stove myself, you would probably be writing about another carbon monoxide poisoning,” Mr Norbert says angrily. Why was the problem addressed so late? “After the tragedy that occurred in February last year, the apartment was inspected very thoroughly. The specialists had no reservations about the operation of the ventilation and flue chimneys,” Jerzy Łacina emphasizes. “In my opinion, MZGM could have informed us that the stove had been rebuilt and asked us to check the ‘draft’.”

The name of the person featured in the article has been changed. We will return to this matter.

(information ii)