The testimony of the woman injured by the drone that exploded in the apartment building in Galati: “The hall was on fire, there was a big flame. I started calling the child”

The woman who lived in the apartment on the 10th floor of the block devastated by the explosion of a Russian drone told Digi24 how she experienced the chaos of the night and what she went through with her 14-year-old son. Both she and her child ended up in hospital with minor injuries.

The Russian drone crashed on the night of May 28 to 29, over a block of flats in Galati. The impact was followed by an explosion and fire at a 10th-floor apartment where a mother and her 14-year-old son lived.

The woman said she woke up in the middle of the chaos, with the ceiling collapsed and the hall on fire.

“The hall was burning, there was a big flame, I didn't know what to associate it with, it was shaking. And I shouted. I started calling for the child. I know I didn't hear myself in my ears. I told him – Get out! I know I repeated to him: Get out! The child wasn't coming,” the woman told Digi24.

“It was a bigger vibration, I don't know, initially I thought it was an earthquake. And I say, but… why is it burning? Why is the hall on fire?”, the woman said.

The woman's thoughts were on her boy, how to save him, although she did not understand very well what was happening.

“I started to call the child. I know I didn't hear in my ears. I don't know how to say… I didn't even wake up well, I was trying to shout, but I had no voice. I shouted until the child answered me. I told him – Get out! I know I repeated to him – Get out!”, said the woman.

The woman also told how she managed to get out of the apartment.

“I clearly remember pulling the door and it didn't open, I don't know how the key went in then, but it did. And I know it was blocked by debris. That's when I got a little scared. I said: what am I going to do if I don't open the door? I pulled it until it opened,” the woman said.

She also said that drops of bitumen were flowing from the ceiling,

“The rubble, I don't know how to explain it to you, the ceiling, it was like that, with a peak! And I couldn't go over it. I walked by, because it was flowing (…) drops of bitumen, I think,” the woman said.

She and her son made it to the stairs of the apartment building, where the firemen found them. Later, they were transported to the hospital by ambulance.

“It seems unreal to me, honestly (…) Someone told me “I can't believe it!”. I don't know if you believe me, I'm in the hospital bed and I can't believe it,” she added.

The drone crashed over a block of flats in Galati

The drone that hit a block of flats in Galati was a Russian Geran-2 model. It had a 30-kilogram High-Explosive warhead that exploded on impact, the Ministry of National Defense (MApN) announced.

President Nicușor Dan urgently convened the CSAT meeting on May 29 and called the crash of the Russian drone in Galati “the most serious security incident on Romanian territory since the beginning of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine”.

“We had a Russian drone, Gheran-2, that left Russia. We know the trajectory, we know where it passed through Ukraine, we know where it entered Romania, part of a swarm of 43 Russian drones, of which only one reached the territory of Romania”, declared Nicușor Dan, at the end of the CSAT meeting.

Following the CSAT meeting, it was decided to close the Russian Consulate in Constanța, and consul Andrey Kosilin was declared persona non grata.