Sochi Residents Melt Snow, Light Fires to Survive Record Snowfall

Many Russians think that Sochi has eternal summer and never gets snow. But this is a deeply mistaken belief. Heavy snowfalls covered the subtropical resort on New Year«s Eve, and residents of mountain settlements are still surviving in difficult conditions. Details are in the report by SOCHI1.RU journalist Anna Gritsevich.

Trash, Ice, and Traffic Jams

Heavy snowfalls tested the resilience not only of residents, infrastructure, and roads but also of the local administration. Thousands of Sochi residents lived without electricity, water, and roads; garbage has not been removed from some container sites since the beginning of the year. The city hall daily reported on solid waste removal, while residents posted new photos of dumps on the streets. Problems persist even now; before the last snowfall this weekend, the regional operator warned that not all container sites would be accessible. In short, snow is to blame for everything.

Irkutsk resident Victoria Malinina has just returned from Sochi, where she spent two weeks. She had never seen such piles of garbage on the streets as in Krasnaya Polyana.

«I dreamed of a trip to Sochi for the New Year holidays. I saved up for several years; it»s a very expensive pleasure. But the whole impression was ruined by overflowing trash bins, one of which was on the street where our hotel was located. It kept growing, and no one was removing anything. If the central street was more or less cleared, the secondary ones were not at all. It was impossible to move around simply. By evening, everything turned into a skating rink. A woman from our hotel fell and broke her leg,« says Victoria.

The authorities apparently had enough strength and resources only to clear the central roads in the mountain cluster, where tourists are now heading. But even there collapses were unavoidable. A huge traffic jam, where people stood for more than 7 hours, paralyzed Krasnaya Polyana. Sochi Mayor Andrey Proshunin, after the holidays, said that during the New Year holidays, the Sochi Municipal Control Center (MCU) received more than 2,000 complaints about uncollected garbage, power outages, fallen trees, and transport congestion. And promised «work on errors.» But as a result, residents of mountain and foothill villages saved themselves.

Still Surviving

Resident of Vorontsovka village in the Khostinsky district, Olga Noskovets, told a SOCHI1.RU correspondent that they have been surviving since December 30 of last year, when the first snowfall buried Sochi. The populations of the villages Kalinovoye Ozero, Vorontsovka, Illarionovka, and Khleborob literally fought for their lives.

«The fence was broken, a tree fell on the roof. The Sochi National Park does not allow the removal of hazardous trees along the roads. They fall on wires, which is why we had no electricity for a long time. Branches hung over the wires all summer and all autumn. And when all this was buried under snow, they came crashing down. So we sat without power. Our roads are in bad shape; there»s one half-dead tractor for all our villages. First, it comes to us, clears our area, then goes all the way to Bestuzhevka (the distance between villages is 60 kilometers). While it«s cleaning there, everything gets snowed in here, the bus doesn»t run, children don«t go to school. We wrote to the prosecutor»s office from our villages,« said Olga. On the first night when it snowed, there was a terrible roar in the forest: trees were falling.

The snowfall that passed several days ago no longer caused significant damage because the wires in the villages are practically lying on the ground. If there«s light—that»s fine, says Olga.

«While the snow and piled-up trees are there, no one is doing or removing anything. They»re waiting for spring. How many times did I ask to remove at least the top of the tree that eventually fell on the house. We would have done it ourselves, but no, not a single branch can be touched—it«s a national park. It»s good that it only dented the roof; if it had fallen the other way, it would have taken down half the house,« says Olga. Despite the fact that the roads are now without snow, they practically don»t exist. The asphalt is destroyed, pothole after pothole.

«Besides the highway, which is poorly cleared, there are dozens of roads inside the villages that no one cleaned at all. We at least had water because it flows by gravity. Kalinovoye Ozero sat without water because they have a centralized water supply from Matsesta,» says Olga.

They only went out for food in four-wheel-drive vehicles, at their own risk on the ice. In the villages, practically every yard has «Nivas» and UAZs. According to Olga Noskovets, snowfalls in Sochi are not rare, but always in February. They endured three or four days of snow collapse steadfastly. But this year, nature has been testing Sochi residents« resilience for almost a month already.

Resident of Golitsino village in the Adler district, Aksana Sakhonchik, said that all holidays their gardening non-profit partnership (SNT) experienced problems with electricity. The local substation could not handle the load.

«We heat with wood, we buy a truckload every autumn. But people heat with electricity. In the evening, our light barely shines, there»s no voltage. On New Year«s, they gave us light for 10 minutes, then turned it off again. There were some breakdowns all holidays. We had very heavy snow, wires broke under the weight. Then they cut off the water because the pumping station was without power. Until January 10, there was either no light or no water. Internet was restored only on January 12. Now they turn off the water every night. Many people live here, they divided the plots and built elite houses, they all have heated pools, saunas. They need it more, »Skypark« also needs water, but we don»t. They have everything good, but they cut us off,« said Aksana.

According to her, the village bus did not run for a long time; during the last snowfall several days ago, it could not reach the settlement—there was severe ice, roads were not cleaned at all. Until local residents started writing complaints wherever possible.

«A grader came, covered the road with sand, and then the bus started running. In our SNT, no one cleans the roads at all, only the road where the bus goes. We get out here as best we can. My husband didn»t go to work for many days. Before New Year«s, he put on chains, we barely got out with skidding. Our delivered gas ran out, and we needed to buy food for New Year»s. On December 29, we bought everything and didn«t go out anymore. Somehow, we drained gasoline from the car, poured it into the generator, and cooked the New Year»s table on it,« said Aksana.

Thousands of Sochi residents found themselves in a snow captivity in their villages without water and light.

«We melted snow to wash and drink tea. It»s good that we have no enterprises, the snow is perfectly clean. On the street, we lit bonfires, cooked food, warmed up. Inside the house was like outside. Last year, we dismantled the wood stove, haven«t had time to make a new one yet. And why? We have heated floors everywhere, which turned out to be meaningless without electricity,» said Ilya Zakharov, a resident of the Khostinsky district. He says that people were left in danger alone with their problems. He only prayed that no one in the family would get sick; an ambulance definitely wouldn«t have reached.