Voronezh Gardeners Endure -30°C Cold, May Fund Grid Repairs

The second meeting this month on the electricity problem in the Blizhnie and Dalnie Sady areas of Voronezh was held on February 2 at the regional Ministry of Housing and Communal Services. Authorities tried to determine who should modernize the networks in the horticultural non-profit partnerships (SNT) and how to help people who are freezing right now.

The first thing noted by the Ministry of Housing and Communal Services after the meeting was that electricity consumption by SNT residents is 2-3 times higher than estimated. Because of this, the networks laid back in the 1950s for ordinary dachas cannot handle it, leading to accidents.

«Plots originally intended for horticulture are being used for year-round living. At the same time, the infrastructure has not been brought into line with the actual needs of residents: residential premises are heated with electricity in winter,» the ministry notes.

How it happened that the active settlement of SNTs and their transformation into, essentially, a private sector of the city was not properly controlled, authorities remain silent for now. Only Voronezh Mayor Sergei Petrin noted, responding to journalists« questions on February 2, that »if residents want to use dachas year-round and live there permanently, it is necessary to develop infrastructure.« At whose expense and when this will be done has not yet been decided. The Voronezh1.ru editorial team is investigating this issue.

At the meeting, it was also concluded that in the very near future, the Sady areas need to increase electricity supply capacity. The resource supplier, KBKhA, is ready for this. But increasing energy supply with the existing networks in the SNT is practically impossible — they won«t withstand it, and accidents will become even more frequent. The actual owner of the electrical infrastructure is the company »Kvartal,« but it is not ready to modernize the equipment on its own.

«Director of LLC »Kvartal« Ivan Popenkov explained that as the owner of the network section, he is not obligated to improve it; this is a need exclusively of the consumers themselves. And in his opinion, they should pay for it. The company eliminates regular accidents,» the ministry reported.

There, by the way, previously provided other information — that the power grid facilities supplying the garden plots belong to the common property of the SNTs themselves. That is, formally, the responsibility for the maintenance, repair, and modernization of the networks on the plots should be borne by the plot owners themselves.

While authorities figure out who exactly should be responsible for updating the networks — the company that bought these networks or the gardeners — the SNT residents themselves are forced to literally survive in severe frosts. The schedule for alternating electricity supply introduced on February 1 in Blizhnie and Dalnie Sady although not immediately, did eventually start working. However, this helps little.

As Blizhnie Sady resident Yekaterina told a Voronezh1.ru correspondent, on February 2, the temperature in her house dropped below 0 degrees Celsius (32°F). The family with a child has already moved to the city — living in the SNT is now impossible without gas or a regular stove.

«We were able to move to an apartment in the city, but my mother is there [in the SNT] — she has an old stove left, but it heats only one room — and even that with difficulty,» the woman says.

Yekaterina also reported that SNT residents have appealed to the authorities to introduce a state of emergency in the Sady areas, bring generators, and place people in temporary accommodation centers who cannot survive in the current conditions on their own.

«People are freezing, an acquaintance»s animals froze to death from the cold, and next it will be people. And we have more than one bedridden person in the Sady areas, whom social workers visit. On the first, an electrician almost burned alive when reconnecting electricity. Tomorrow we«ll be expecting to carry out pensioners feet first,» our interlocutor says in despair.

There is no state of emergency or decision on temporary accommodation centers yet — and unlikely to be. Now the Ministry of Housing and Communal Services is trying to determine the approximate cost of increasing capacity in the Sady areas — it should be calculated this week.

«For now, it has been decided to introduce strict control over power consumption and use generators in emergency cases. At the same time, it must be understood that they will not replace the normal operation of cable lines and can only support the operation of power equipment for a short period if necessary,» the ministry said.

So the only thing residents of Blizhnie and Dalnie Sady can count on in 30-degree frosts (-22°F) is the uninterrupted schedule of turning on the lights and generators. The latter, by the late evening of February 2 in the SNT, local residents say, were not yet there.