By Slava Tsukerman
The main news of the week was the worst flooding in decades in southern Russia’s Krasnodar Region, near the Black Sea. In the middle of the night (July 7) the small town of Krymsk (population 57,000) was struck by a huge wave of water descending from the surrounding mountains. What was the cause of this disaster? According to the official version the abnormally heavy rains resulted in the flood. However, many people (including some opposition politicians) link the “tsunami-like” approximately 22 feet high wave described by witnesses with the opening of the sluice gates in one of the mountain reservoirs.
The event was well covered by the American press. New York Time’s report is very informative.
But still there is enough interesting information to add to the report.
It wasn’t left unnoticed in Russia, that for the first time in the observable history citizens of the country showed personal initiative independently from government activity. Volunteers from different places were coming to the disaster area to help the victims of the flood. All the actions of the volunteers were well organized and efficient. All over the Russia by their own initiative people started collecting goods to send to the victims.
This activity showed the obvious growing of the social conscience of Russians.
It is easy to see connection between the activity of volunteers and activity of the protesters in the latest political demonstrations. That’s the authorities reaction to the volunteers’ movement was mixed and often even openly negative.
Meanwhile the Russian Internet is full with the outrage of citizens concerning the authorities’ behavior in the time of the disaster.
Authorities knew about the coming disaster in the evening July 6, and the wave struck the sleeping town only at 2:00 in the morning. Why did noone evacuate or even warn the town’s residents?
Meeting with a distressed and angry crowd of survivors, Alexander Tkachev, the region’s governor, said, “We’ve got the information at 22:00 PM. Should we run to the door of each one of you in order to inform you?”
Here is the Internet poster, quoting this governor’s statement:
The Line under the photo of the Governor is the answer to his question: “Yes, damn you, you should have!”
And here is the comment of one of the Krymsk’s residents: “What do you mean nobody was evacuated? City administration and their families all left the city late in the evening before the flood! Perfectly safe.
172 deaths were reported officially as the victims of the flood. If to trust some publications on Internet, the count of deaths was close to 2000.
Numerous official TV reports show proves that no sluice gates of the mountain reservoirs near Krymsk were opened. But Russians don’t trust even the most detailed government reports. Some Internet publications claim that the water was routed to Krymsk in order to save bigger city of Novorossiysk; some, that authorities this way were protecting an oil refinery; and there are even reports that Krymsk was flooded to prevent damage to the nearby located Putin’s summer house.
One thing is obvious: the government completely lost trust of Russian citizens.
But authorities don’t want to recognize that their own faults caused this mistrust. They blame it on the Putin opposition, on the protestors’ activity. Official TV news call for Russians not to trust the Internet publications about Krymsk, as created by oppositionists by order of American Agencies.
