Disasters in Russia, whose fault and what to do?
In the USSR, government officials did not want to publicly admit their mistakes, and also it was customary to reduce the size of ongoing disasters and the victims who died. In Russia, nothing has changed, but you “can’t handle” the internet, bloggers and local TV channels yet. It remains to keep silent about the causes and reduce the scale of what happened in all ways. This is not for long – in a couple of years, due to the law "On the sovereign internet" and the installed devices from Telecom operators, Roskomnadzor (The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media ) will begin a wholesale purge of "unreliable" resources. In the meantime, we will take advantage of the existing opportunities to look again at the two largest disasters of the past 10 years and, if possible, to objectively understand the real causes that led to the mass death of people and the destruction of cities and towns.
6-7 July 2012, the city of Krymsk and its surrounding areas.
The flood came to Krymsk on the night of July 7. In just a few minutes, the flow of water demolished all the buildings on the way and flooded the first two floors.
The official version was: "an exceptionally powerful flood that occurs once every 200 years. Four months of precipitation fell on the ground. Two processes were superimposed: the river and the slope stream" - the statement made by Alexander Frolov, head of Roshydromet (Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring of Russia). The official number of victims is more than 34 thousand people, 171 people were killed*.
The footage of the destroyed city clearly shows that there was a directed narrow stream that demolished everything in its path, while buildings of a few dozen meters nearby were almost completely untouched. An absolutely uncharacteristic picture for flooding. The second question arises: how could the rain form a wave, several meters high, just to demolish some of the houses in its path? The mechanism of flooding would have been quite different – the slow rise of water would not have led to a mass tragedy. The flow, which passed like a tsunami and in a few minutes demolished or flooded houses to the roofs, allows us to draw a conclusion not about the flood, but about the discharge of water from the underground slope of the Neberdzhaevskoe reservoir.
The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, of course, refutes this version: "water discharges were made in the usual mode". A question arises: what real reasons were covered up by the investigation- an accident, negligence or something else?
Unofficial point of view – the floodgates of the Neberdzhaevskoe reservoir was opened, to save Novorossiysk. And first of all, the Sheskharis Oil Harbour through which oil is shipped for export, as well as the rest of the infrastructure of the Novorossiysk port.
There are reasons to believe this: the Neberdzhaevskoe reservoir has been filled to 100 % since 2002, and this has long bothered the local residents. In the fall of 2011, a large-scale reconstruction of the reservoir was planned - it was planned to raise the dam ridge, reconstruct the mine water outlet, and build a new bottom outlet. But the allocated 600 million rubles obviously went somewhere else, because nothing was done. That is, the reservoir could not perform its tasks during the flood. There was only one option left- water discharge.
Krymsk turned out to be very poorly located – a narrow flow of high altitude came out of the river, and it simply demolished all the houses on its way and then spread out over the rest of the city. According to the survivors, the water was warm, which does not happen in a downpour. The combination of a powerful flow and warm water leads to a clear conclusion - the discharge of water was from the underground slope of the reservoir
Why did the residents die?
Mr. Krutko, the former head of the city administration, said that about 200 people who are members of the local emergency committee went out to the city and made an alert, and "there was a news ticker and an SMS alert". Obviously, government officials are among those who consider SMS notification effective, and do not know that the SMS center does not send information to everyone at once, but does it for hours. And as reality has shown, the SMS did not only come late, but only had part of the text and did not explain anything. And people who were sleeping could not see the news ticker on TV in any way.
Two hundred officials and emergency specialists could have alerted residents in the simplest way- with sirens, horns and bells. In fact, most of them had no time- they saved their belongings and families, they had no time to perform their duties.
By the way, the investigation ended with nothing- Nobody was found guilty, not even the usual "switchmen"; but the dead and those who lost their loved ones- absolutely do not care what was the cause: incompetence or ordinary cowardice. 171 dead – this is a lot, but the affected residents and those who eliminated the consequences of the disaster do not agree with this figure. We are talking about at least 3,000 residents, not counting the missing tourists in the surrounding areas. Overcrowded morgues in the Krasnodar region (in Krymsk, Abinsk, Gelendzhik, Novorossiysk and Slavyansk-on-Kuban), were given financial assistance for more than 3,000 victims – a much more reliable indicator than the official notification
At a meeting with residents of Krymsk on 15.07.2012, Putin questioned the evidence about the discharge of the Neberdzhaevskoe reservoir, mass casualties, lack of timely response of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, sirens of the authorities in the city, etc. Putin also said that "nobody in the world makes reservoirs with underground slopes" and German investigators, who for some reason conducted an investigation faster than the Russians, cannot make the right conclusion – it is necessary to do a local investigation. Even if the German specialists were mistaken, the bottom outlet was specified in the technical documentation of the Neberdzhaevskoe reservoir
And here are the pipes of the "nonexistent discharge".
If the criminal decision was made at the regional level, why would the President cover up the criminals? Therefore, we can conclude that the decision to discharge was made at the very top. And the President is at least one of the participants in the decision-making, if not the only one.
A full-scale operation to conceal reliable information was successful - Krymsk is gradually being forgotten.
June 25-August 4, 2019. Irkutsk region
1st flood wave from June 25, 2019. 2nd flood wave from July 27. Water level stabilization - August 4.
Official version: the disaster in the Irkutsk region "...was led to by the abnormal development of atmospheric processes. There was a unique situation- close interaction of three air masses: Arctic, subtropical and the removal of moist air from the Pacific ocean at the heights of the lower and middle troposphere extremely rare in the region. The period of maximum precipitation coincided with the rise of river levels and the release of the first tropical cyclone of the hurricane season. Heat and moisture in conditions of heterogeneous terrain manifested themselves in the development of clouds and corresponding precipitation. The result - for three days, from 25 to 27 June, a record amount of precipitation for the territory of the region fell - more than the monthly amount by 3.7 times". This is the opinion of the Department of Meteorology and Near-earth Space Physics of the Geographical Faculty of Irkutsk State University. This same version in a more simplified form - the flood in the Irkutsk region began at the end of June after prolonged rains that led to a rise in the water level in the rivers Iya, Oka, Uda, Belaya, Angara, Biryusa, Irkut, Toysuk, Zima, Kirei, Malaya Belaya, Ikey, Bolshaya Belaya and Chuna. The Iya river in Tulun rose to 14 meters at the critical level of 10 meters. Roads were destroyed and traffic on the Federal highway R-258 Baikal was interrupted. 82 settlements, almost 11 thousand houses were flooded, about half of them completely.
30 people were killed and more than 2,500 were evacuated. Material damage - 35 billion rubles. The entire harvest and the new sowing was lost.
At the forum in Vladivostok, Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Dmitry Kobylkin said that "a man-made cause of this flood simply does not exist and there is no need to look for it". He blamed Roshydromet for its poor performance- lack of warning about a future disaster and said that serious changes were coming to the organization, which would allow it to work on "prevention and anticipation"in the future.
It is interesting that, as in Krymsk, the local authorities of the Irkutsk region and the Ministry of Emergency Situations worked abominably. And although this was not mentioned loudly, the Prosecutor's office conducted an investigation and identified the culprits. No high-profile trials, no names - just a few lines in the official report.
What was the real situation?
The actual scale of death does not correspond to the official statement, but unlike Krymsk, they acted uncivilized and quickly, so thanks to a conversation with an emergency worker, it became known that about 400 people who died in Tulun were not taken to morgues, but were immediately buried in mass graves
We will not speculate on people's lives, unfortunately, there are no more open sources from which to get objective information. But the fact that a much higher death rate was hidden, and the fact that the specific names of those responsible for late notification of the population and ineffective actions during evacuation were not officially named, suggests that the reasons are not due to increased precipitation.
This is a rare case when American sanctions imposed on informal cooperation between business and government led to the death of people. More precisely, American sanctions against Rusal and Mr. Deripaska personally led to the need to optimize costs. To increase power generation, it was necessary to maintain a high water level in the hydroelectric power station. This is a direct violation of the operating conditions, since in the case of rains and floods, the reservoir will not be able to "suck" the excess volume. As if this is not enough- an additional flow came with the Irkutsk hydroelectric power station, which regulates Baikal. Judging by the temporary shallowing of lake Baikal, a huge volume was dropped. And then everything is simple. Precipitation in June in the Irkutsk region fell by only 23% more than normal. But the Bratsk reservoir was already full, although it would seem that the giant Bratsk sea is capable of receiving huge volumes of water. And the dam failed
Sorry for the tautology, the disaster might not have been so catastrophic if it had not been prepared by the corruption of government officials.
First. Deforestation in the Sayan mountains. A monstrous one. In favor of China. One felled cedar, a torn turf and a destroyed moss around the tree- this is minus one ton of water retained by the soil. Treeless slopes do not hold water or land. The same anomalous precipitation in Sayan fell in a flood because they first brought down the ecosystem that restrains precipitation.
Second – these places were flooded before. And this has been known since the 18th century. It is not surprising that a dam was built in 2008. It was built by the Bolotovs pair. The father is the head of a construction company and the son is the Minister of Construction of the region- he, of course, could not entrust such a responsible task to someone other than his closest relative. By the way, the son is "quite accidentally" a United Russia member, otherwise how would he have missed such a blatant and obvious fact of insider trading during the tender and subsequent corruption? But the trouble is, they built a dam only 10 meters high, although the flood of 1984, even before deforestation, was 11 meters high. It is worth noting that the bridge built under Nicholas II is 20 meters high. And the choice of height is clearly not accidental - the builders of the past took into account information about the height of floods. Therefore, unlike modern buildings, it still stands intact. But the dam just "did not notice" the flow of 14 meters high.
And finally, two in one: the permission to build on floodplains, which leads to flooding in the event of a flood (the same permissions that are issued by local officials through bribes) and the lack of timely warning about the impending disaster, because along the network of reservoirs, the hydrometeorological posts that once stood there were removed.
Thus, it is not global warming and abnormal precipitation that have killed people and deprived them of their homes, but the extremely brazen corruption and blatant incompetence of government officials, forcing them to meet the criminal desires of Russian and Chinese business.
In the Krasnodar region, the situation is the same: corruption and gross violation of environmental regulations. All local disasters and lost human lives were associated with the floods of 2002, 2010, and then 2012. Riverbeds are not cleaned – they are littered with garbage dumps and fallen trees. Forests on the slopes are cut down by loggers cleanly, gravel is extracted from the riverbeds rapaciously, and the shores are turned into building sites
To sum up. The cause of the two largest disasters was not natural factors at all, but man-made ones. Actually, the word "man-made" hints that the cause of the disaster is in people, but it does not explain anything. It's time to introduce a clarification and write frankly, for example, "the disaster has a bureaucratic nature" and everyone will immediately understand everything. And global warming, which is about to be added to fools and roads, should be pitied by scientists, and used less often in attempts to justify the incompetence of the authorities. That in fact, has no gratitude, and very soon will reduce the number of deceitful and obliging slaves from science.
Because of the boundless appetites and criminal activities of government officials, funds for economic development are spent on restoring back to life settlements and cities destroyed in times of peace. We are wasting our time and competitiveness in the global market. Innocent good people are dying en masse. There is no war, and thousands of families are mourning. This is a war, a hotspot is created by government officials headed with the sitting President and Co at the top. And until there are those who will clean up all this filth, it will not be better.
*
**https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/НаводнениевКраснодарскомкрае(2012)
https://neftegaz.ru/news/incidental/262704-krymsk-shlyuzy-neberdzhaevskogo-vodokhranilishcha-otkryli-chto-by-spasti-neftenalivnuyu-gavan-sheskh/
http://russiahousenews.info/analitics-and-comments/krimsk-lozh-pravitelstva-srashnaya-pravda-ochevidtsev
https://www.liveinternet.ru/users/phthisiatr/post228597164
https://shaburow.livejournal.com/319408.html
Irkutsk region
https://www.rbc.ru/photoreport/02/07/2019/5d1b001a9a7947adb335426e
https://isu.ru/ru/news/newsitem.html?action=show&id=7268
https://www.irk.kp.ru/online/news/3525295/
https://www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/5d1a17519a794764af619a18
https://genproc.gov.ru/smi/news/genproc/news-1646576/
https://zen.yandex.ru/media/lsycheva/o-prichinah-navodneniia-v-irkutskoi-oblasti-5d1a5991e0cbf200add191ff
http://kriknews.ru/news/society/iz_tuluna_tayno_vyvezli_400_trupov_skolko_irkutyan_ubila_stikhiya_na_samom_dele/
https://bellona.ru/2012/07/10/prichiny-tragedii-v-krymske-korruptsi-2/
@defrit aka golos.io/@runews