Brr-Isk Business: Heat Crews Busy

SARAJEVO, Yugoslavia - Friday, 9:15 a.m. Report says there's a sediment impediment in a radiator pipe over on Tetovska 12.

Let's roll.

``This thing doesn't work,'' says a scowling Jovo Karakas, 61, a heavyset man, motioning to the radiator in his 12th-floor flat. ``It's worthless.''

``Could you get rid of the gun?'' repairman Ramiz Polutan, 31, asks Karakas, pointing to a pistol lying on the dining room table between him and the radiator. Karakas, a retired police sergeant, apologizes and takes it from the small room.

Polutan, Fikret Bibic and Sreten Perendija make up one of seven repair crews that hurtle desperately around Sarajevo in little red trucks to administer first aid to the city's massive central heating system, beset by countless nickel-and-dinar leaks and blockages.

October is always the busy month for repair crews, because the heat gets turned on after a five-month hiatus. Since the heat went on in Sarajevo on Oct. 15, the central repair office has been getting about 80 complaints a day.

Central heating is one of socialism's legacies in Eastern Europe. In larger cities, huge boiler stations heat water that circulates through radiators in towering ugly buildings, each of which often houses hundreds of residential flats.

The repair crews, unable to keep up with demand, often are greeted like favorite nephews - people see their red trucks and emerge from their flats to ask, ``When are you coming over to my place?'' - but other times they are subjected to prolonged verbal abuse by angry, cold residents.

Karakas, like many, views central heating as a terribly imperfect science. He cited extended periods in winters past when his flat was altogether without heat: His wife stayed in bed; he took frequent walks.

Normally, the heat goes on at 6:30 a.m. and goes off at 10 p.m. That's no problem, Karakas said, if you get up at 6:30 and go to bed at 10, but ``sometimes I feel like building a fire in here. That way I could control my own heat.''

As he spoke, the crew flushed the obstruction from his radiator pipe, and hot water could be heard rushing in. Karakas was soon a happier man, and somehow he seemed much warmer.

The crew worked like lightning, carrying 30 pounds of tools in a leather bag with which they replace valves and gaskets and un-

blocked pipes all over town. Three stops in an hour sometimes. In and out, you're welcome; in and out, no problem; in and out, it's nothing, really.

``The worst thing is people who try to fix the problems themselves,'' said repairman Perendija, 26. ``They tamper with something and then break it, and when we get there they say, `I don't know, it just happened.'''

At Bala Pariske Komune No. 9, Dr. Dervish Ramadanovic, 79, sheepishly showed the repair crew a radiator in his main room. An odd-looking valve stuck out one end, leaking.

``Who put that on there?'' asked Bibic, 24.

``You guys did,'' said the retired surgeon, who lives alone.

``I don't think so,'' one of the repairmen said.

Ramadanovic confessed that he had a plumber friend from a local brewery replace the valve after he broke it.

Young mothers and older people tend to call and complain the most, said Faruk Hadziabdic, 50, director of Toplane Sarajevo, the city heating works. He said he tries to be understanding, but he thinks most people want too much from their heating.

At Dure Salaja 43, the address of a music school, hot water spewed from a radiator in a piano practice room. Milka Krstovic, 43, a custodian, looked haggard from hauling buckets of water all morning while waiting for the repair crew. Her mission: save the piano.

The crew wasted no time starting in. The maintenance man craned his neck to observe. The secretary dropped in to comment. A flutist peered in. The room buzzed. In minutes, with a minimum of grunting and wrenching, a new valve was in place.

``Those guys are good,'' said Stana Krasnic, 40, the secretary. ``I would have just taken a hammer to it.''

The crew left, barely taking time to acknowledge the chorus of thanks. There were about 300,000 radiators out there in Sarajevo, and one could almost hear them calling.