Lack of Water, Power Disrupt Life in Belgrade

After 2 1/2 days without water and electricity, residents of a 10-story apartment complex on the edge of Belgrade descended darkened stairwells late Monday with as many empty plastic containers as they could carry.

A municipal water truck, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital’s latest defense against NATO, had lumbered into the parking lot and opened its tap.

As children scampered in and out of the truck’s cabin, adults took turns at the thick black hoses protruding from the back. Then they headed back upstairs, treading carefully to avoid spilling any of their precious cargo.

This city of 2 million people was down to a few hours of water reserves Monday in its seven reservoirs that don’t require electric pumps, officials said, after NATO bombs damaged pumping stations and cut electricity to the few water pumps still working.

With about a week’s worth of water in the 12 reservoirs that must be pumped, City Hall dispatched 50 tanker trucks normally used for street cleaning to take water from these sources and spread it around town. The water went first to hospitals and bakeries, then to residential areas beyond the reach of those pipes where the water is still flowing.

Not since the North Atlantic Treaty Organization began bombing Yugoslavia two months ago have so many Serbs felt the war so directly for so long.

The last big blackout, three weeks ago, hit most of Serbia for about 16 hours. This one began early Saturday with attacks on a power station near Belgrade and continued with bombings Sunday and early Monday, causing a near-continuous outage in more than two-thirds of Yugoslavia’s dominant republic.

By Monday evening, power had been restored to about 30% of Belgrade, but far fewer people had running water, according to Deputy Mayor Milan Bozic. He said he fears that more damage in coming days could lead to prolonged water shortages and disease. Radio bulletins warned Belgraders not to drink untreated well water.

“I can see a small village surviving months or years in these conditions, but in such a big city--I simply cannot imagine it,” Bozic said. Referring to the Khmer Rouge’s emptying of the Cambodian capital two decades ago, he added: “This is not Phnom Penh. We cannot force-march everyone to the countryside.”

The city’s major hospitals continued to perform emergency surgery and deliver babies Monday with the help of emergency fuel-powered generators, but medical personnel had to haul water around in buckets or soft-drink bottles.

Some smaller clinics had no power until Monday afternoon. For Dr. Alexander Savic, who treats 30 children for cerebral palsy, this meant those suffering epileptic seizures could not be hooked up to electronic monitors that help determine what kind of medication they need. He recorded four such seizures during the blackout.

Belgraders took the disruption stoically.

Around water trucks and in the few bakeries selling bread, one couldn’t tell from most conversations that the country was under attack. People gossiped about their neighbors and politely lectured those who were trying to cut into line. A woman ridiculed her husband for bringing a bucket with a hole in it to fetch water.

. People here complain that decade-long Western sanctions, like the bombing that aims to halt the crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Serbia’s Kosovo province, hurt them, not Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

“Do they really think that dying Serbs can challenge the regime?” asked Bojan Nikolic, 34, an electrical engineer.

Around a charcoal fire in his backyard, Nenad Davinic, a 40-year-old civil engineer, said the bombs were “uniting all Serbs into one hard fist that will strike back at America.”

Inside the house, his 71-year-old mother, Nendelka, was staring at two days of dirty dishes.

Her son “sounds tough, but all he does is talk,” she said. “Meanwhile, we’re living like gypsies. We’re living from one day to the next praying that this will end tomorrow. Then we want to move to America.”