The Full Story of T8 Iași, 1985 (Part 2/2)
This post is a full translation of a story circulating on Facebook. It serves as the background context for my previous article, "The World Has Changed: Between Forced Survival and Smart Choices (Part 1/2)", where I shared my personal views on these events.
In February 1985, Student Dormitory T8 in Iași was left completely without heat and hot water for 11 days due to a major failure at the main thermal plant. The 840 students survived by sleeping fully dressed, burning books and furniture for warmth, and melting snow for water, turning the dormitory into a survival settlement in the middle of a frozen city.
The winter of 1985 had been brutal throughout Romania. Temperatures dropped below -20°C and stayed there for weeks. The centralized heating system was working at its limit. Something had to give. On February 10, it did.
The Eastern Thermal Plant in Iași, which supplied four student dorms and three residential blocks, suffered a major explosion in the main boiler due to overpressure. Two workers were seriously injured. The boiler was completely destroyed. Repairs were estimated to take at least two weeks.
For the 840 students of Dorm T8, the failure meant disaster. No heat, no hot water, in the middle of the harshest winter in 20 years. The outside temperature was -23°C. Inside the rooms, without heating, the temperature dropped by 2-3 degrees every hour.
The first night, students slept in their daytime clothes. The second night, in their coats. By the third night, they were wearing every piece of clothing they owned, under every available blanket, with two or three students sharing a bed to keep warm.
The administration tried to find solutions, distributing 200 old army blankets for 840 students. It wasn't enough. They tried to get electric heaters, but in 1985, during the peak of the energy crisis, heaters didn't exist in stores. Everything was rationed and controlled.
By the fourth day, the temperature in the rooms had dropped to -5°C. Ice formed on the inside of the windows. Water in containers froze overnight. One's breath was constantly visible. Sleeping in a room at -5°C meant a real risk of hypothermia.
Students began taking desperate measures. In the hallways and rooms, they started burning things for heat. They had no wood, but they had old books, damaged furniture, paper, and cardboard. In room 347, four Chemistry students improvised a stove from two stacked metal buckets. They burned old books and newspapers. The small flame produced minimal heat, but within a one-meter radius, it was bearable. Within 24 hours, over 100 rooms had similar improvised stoves.
Water became the next crisis. Pipes froze. Students from the upper floors had no water at all. Their solution: they went down to the yard with buckets, filled them with snow, carried them up, and melted the snow over their improvised fires. Melted snow became water for drinking, washing, and cooking.
Toilets became unusable. The smell in the dorm became unbearable within the first week. Hygiene was impossible. After a week, all students smelled of sweat, wood smoke, and accumulated dirt.
Mihai Popescu, a 3rd-year Mechanical Engineering student, became a local hero by improvising a more efficient heating system from a 50-liter metal drum. His room became the warmest on the floor, reaching up to +10°C when the fire burned well. But fuel was the problem. After 5 days, they ran out of paper and old books. They started burning furniture: chairs, desks, wardrobe doors.
Maria Ionescu, a 2nd-year Philology student, suffered frostbite on her toes during the seventh night. She had slept without taking off her wet boots. When her friends tried to thaw her feet with warm water, the pain was excruciating. She lost sensation in three toes—a permanent injury.
On the ninth day, the news reached the press. Journalists from Scânteia Tineretului documented the frozen rooms and improvised stoves. By the tenth day, the army brought 50 military electric heaters powered by generators, placed in common areas where students took turns warming up for 2-3 hours.
On the eleventh day, the plant was partially repaired. Heat returned, and by the twelfth day, the system was fully restored. For the first time in 11 days, students could wash with hot water and sleep without coats.
The toll: 23 students with varying degrees of frostbite, five hospitalized with hypothermia, and over 200 pieces of furniture burned. But all 840 students survived. Through improvisation and solidarity, they turned a frozen dormitory into a community of survival.
Today, it is almost impossible to understand that in February 1985, these students didn't wait for authorities to solve the problem. They improvised and survived through pure grit, proving that youth can endure anything when there is no other choice.