A fire in a dilapidated Nalchik dormitory has raised concerns among residents.

On the night of April 26, a fire broke out in a dormitory on Ashurova Street in Nalchik, several people suffered carbon monoxide poisoning. The building, which has been declared unsafe, is without power. Authorities are ignoring the need to relocate residents; no officials came even after the fire, residents complained.

On the night of April 26, a fire broke out in a dormitory at 22 Ashurova Street in Nalchik.

The fire is under investigation, but dormitory residents believe it was deliberately set on fire. They believe an unknown person set fire to an old sofa in the dormitory's hallway on the first floor. Acrid smoke spread to the upper floors. The first residents to wake up made a noise, woke up others, and called the fire department, they told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

Several people were hospitalized with smoke inhalation, including, according to preliminary information, a minor. According to dormitory residents, the injured are in moderate condition.

18:18 31.01.2026

Social media users' reactions highlighted the severity of the dilapidated housing problem in Nalchik

The head of Kabardino-Balkaria reported on the issuance of certificates for new apartments in Nalchik to 124 families relocated from dilapidated housing. Social media users responded to his report with questions about the timeframe for relocating other families from dilapidated buildings.

The dormitory building is without power and smells of burning. As of 1:30 p.m. Moscow time, residents were outside. By this time, neither housing office representatives nor anyone else had visited them. They don't know what to do next.

"Our dormitory was built in 1968. As early as 2011, it was included on the list of dormitories slated for reconstruction and relocation of residents. However, neither the reconstruction nor the relocation took place. "Nobody cares about us," one of the building's residents told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent, noting that the building is physically dilapidated and was declared unsafe more than five years ago.

The dormitory is home to 72 families.

The problem of resettling residents from dormitories is acute in Nalchik.

According to information in open sources, in 2011 there were 66 dormitories in Kabardino-Balkaria requiring resettlement.

Some of them have now been resettled into new buildings. In particular, at the end of January of this year, 124 families living in the Nalchik dormitory at 15a Kadyrov Street received certificates for new apartments.

However, 31 dormitories remain unoccupied.

During a discussion of the implementation of the resettlement program from dilapidated housing in the Parliament of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic at the end of last year, the first deputy head of the Nalchik local administration, Anatoly Tonkonog, reported that "the problem is exacerbated by the constant aging of the city's housing stock. Thus, starting in 2022, nine more buildings in the municipality have been declared unsafe and require inclusion in the resettlement program.".

KBR Minister of Construction and Housing and Public Utilities Andrei Zhuravlev reported that the total area of ​​uninhabitable housing in the republic exceeds 35,000 square meters.

A complete solution to the problem will require two billion rubles. At the same time, as the minister noted, "a reduction in funding is being observed."

As "Kavkazsky Uzel" reported, the unsafe dormitories on Musukayeva and Ingushskaya Streets in Nalchik have been included in the municipal target resettlement program starting in 2022, which has not been funded for a year. Residents of these houses asked officials to speed up the resettlement, complaining of difficult living conditions.