Sochi's Snow Crisis: Residents Left Without Power and Water
The snowfall has just begun, and soon the road will be gone.
Many Russians think that Sochi has eternal summer and never sees snow. But this is a deep misconception. Heavy snowfalls hit the subtropical resort on New Year«s Eve, and residents of mountain settlements are still surviving in difficult conditions. Details are in a report by SOCHI1.RU journalist Anna Grintsevich.
A «New Year»s« dump in place of a garbage container in Krasnaya Polyana.
Trash, Ice, and Traffic Jams
Snow in Sochi is wet and heavy.
The heavy snowfalls tested not only the residents, utilities, and roads but also the local administration. Thousands of Sochi residents lived without electricity, water, and passable roads; trash has not been removed from some collection sites since the start of the year. The mayor«s office 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 waste operator warned that not all collection sites would be accessible. In short, the snow is to blame for everything.
The road to Vorontsovka.
Victoria Malinina from Irkutsk just returned from Sochi, where she spent two weeks. She had never seen such piles of trash on the streets as in Krasnaya Polyana.
A tree fell on Olga Noskovets«s house.
«I dreamed of a trip to Sochi for the New Year holidays. I saved for several years; it»s a very expensive pleasure. But the overflowing trash bins ruined the entire impression; one was on the street where our hotel was located. It kept growing, and no one removed anything. While the main street was cleaned more or less, the secondary streets were not cleaned at all. It was simply impossible to get around. By evening, everything turned into an ice rink. A woman from our hotel fell and broke her leg,« says Victoria.
Sochi has not seen such a snowy January in a long time.
The authorities apparently had enough strength and resources only to clear the central roads in the mountain cluster, where tourists now flock. But even there, it was not without collapses. A huge traffic jam, where people stood for more than 7 hours, paralyzed Krasnaya Polyana. After the holidays, Sochi Mayor Andrey Proshunin said that during the New Year holidays, the Sochi Municipal Control Center received more than 2,000 complaints about uncollected garbage, power outages, fallen trees, and traffic jams. And he promised «work on mistakes.» But in the end, residents of mountain and foothill villages saved themselves.
Still Surviving
Olga Noskovets, a resident of Vorontsovka village in the Khosta district, told a SOCHI1.RU correspondent that they have been surviving since 30 December of last year, when the first snowfall buried Sochi. The population of the villages of 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 emergency trees along the roads. They fall on power lines, which is why we were without electricity for a long time. Branches hung over the wires all summer and autumn. And when all this was covered with snow, they came crashing down. So we sat without power. The roads are in a bad state; we have one half-dead tractor for all our villages. It comes to us first, clears our area, then goes all the way to Bestuzhevka (the distance between villages is 60 kilometers). While it is clearing 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 was snowing, there was a terrible crash in the forest: trees were falling.
The snowfall a few days ago did not cause significant damage because the wires in the villages practically lie on the ground. «We have light—and that»s fine,« says Olga.
«While the snow and fallen trees are piled up, no one does or clears anything. They are waiting for spring. How many times did I ask to remove at least the top of the tree, which eventually fell on the house. We would have done it ourselves, but no, you can»t touch a single branch—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 out half the house,« says Olga. Even though the roads are now free of snow, they are practically nonexistent. 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 cleared at all. At least we had water because it flows by gravity. Kalinovoye Ozero was without water because they have a centralized water supply from Matsesta,» says Olga.
They only went out for supplies in four-wheel-drive vehicles, at their own risk on the ice. In the villages, practically every yard has a Niva or UAZ. According to Olga Noskovets, snowfalls in Sochi are not uncommon, 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.
Aksana Sakhonchik, a resident of Golitsyno village in the Adler district, said that their gardening non-profit partnership (SNT) experienced problems with electricity throughout the holidays. The local substation could not handle the load.
«We heat with firewood, we buy a truckload every autumn. But people heat with electricity. In the evening, our light barely glows, 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 through the holidays. We had very heavy snow, wires broke under the weight. Then the water was cut off because the pumping station was without power. Until 10 January, we either had no light or no water. The internet was restored only on 12 January. Now they cut off the water every night. Many people live here, they subdivided the plots and built elite houses, they all have heated pools, saunas. Water is more needed there, »Skypark« needs water too, but we don»t need it. They have everything fine, but they cut us off,« said Aksana.
According to her, the village bus did not run for a long time; during the last snowfall a few days ago, it could not reach the settlement—there was severe ice, and the 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 runs. We get out here as best we can. My husband didn»t go to work for many days. Before the New Year, he put on chains, we barely got out with wheelspin. Our delivered gas ran out, and we needed to buy groceries for the New Year. On 29 December, we bought everything and didn«t go out again. 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 snowy captivity in their villages without water and light.
«We melted snow to wash and drink tea. It»s good that we have no industrial plants, the snow is perfectly clean. We lit bonfires outside, cooked food, warmed ourselves. It was as cold inside the house as outside. Last year we dismantled the wood stove, haven«t had time to make a new one. And why? We have underfloor heating everywhere, which turned out to be useless without electricity,» said Ilya Zakharov, a resident of the Khosta district. He says people were left in danger alone with their problems. He only prayed that none of his relatives would get sick, because an ambulance definitely wouldn«t get through.
