After the flood: how Tulun copes with the effects of flooding

- Let's meet in the center of Tulun?

- Where do you think the center of Tulun is now?

So begins my acquaintance with a small town located about 400 km from Irkutsk, a little more than 500 km from Krasnoyarsk and about 200 km from Bratsk. Transfer point at the crossroads of Siberian roads. More precisely, all that is left of him.

I breathe in the air. This smell will eat into my skin and clothes all the time spent here. Slightly sweet smell of rotting and viscous, almost physically visible, the smell of mold. The air is so humid that you can chop with an ax. Just want to wash.

But in Tulun, which survived the flood, it is just impossible to wash. For drinking and washing - only bottled water. Food - only in original packaging, produced before the flood. It is difficult to observe basic hygiene standards: central water supply has not been restored, there are also problems with sewage. When I begin to ask about this in more detail, I receive in my address a mean-good-natured one: “the Muscovite has arrived.” This is said without malice, simply - not harsh, not ours, not a Siberian.

Locals say briefly: "trouble came." Without extra moans and emotions. They call flooding "big water".

“Flooding for us is a usual thing. Usually the neighbors who live in the lowlands call, say: get ready. ” We run to the store, buy food and all families with dogs and cats go to the second floor, because the water comes to the first. If it gets hotter, we sit on the roof, ”Valentina Ivanovna tells me, a short woman with veiny hands, deep wrinkles and a straight posture. She lives in the LDK district, which, like the Meat Factory, was most affected by flooding.

“And this time they just saw it with their own eyes: the wave is coming. We grabbed the children, the documents, the Emergencies Ministry car arrived and we were taken out. Look at my house, look, ”Valentina Ivanovna points out.

Her house is now the windows of the second floor in the middle of a small lake. A woman with her family now lives in the center for temporary migrants, but every day she comes to look at her windows: suddenly the water has gone.

• There are many dogs in Tulun who have lost their owners.
• © Ekaterina Vinokurova / RT

Next to us runs a dirty, once formerly white, dog with wild eyes and tail tucked in fear.

- We had two dogs. One died, one ran away - suddenly he would return. Although where to take it, - says Valentina.

Where did the water come from

The current flood is the second such catastrophe in the history of Tulun. In 1984, the "big water" demolished more than 300 homes.

The dam on the river Oia should protect the inhabitants from floods. In addition, permanent hydrological posts operate in the village of Arshan (it is 83 km in a straight line upstream) and in Tulun itself.

A member of the operational staff for liquidation of the consequences told me that he had learned from his notebooks the observation of a hydropost in the village of Arshan (all the data had already been submitted to the Emergencies Ministry and the Investigation Committee).

“Hydrological observation of the river is carried out constantly, the data are transmitted to the Angarsk cascade of hydropower plants, so that they regulate the descent of water. As soon as the water level overcame the critical point — 200 cm above the norm, the hydrologist from Arshan, according to the instructions, transmitted to the Tulun information about the alarming situation. Then, in his notebooks, the level of increase in Arshan has already reached more than 250 cm above the norm. But before Tulun "big water" still remained a little more than a day. However, for Tulun, this already means evacuation - the hydrologist reported that the situation could be even worse than the flood of 1984, ”says my interlocutor.

Four days before the catastrophe there were heavy rains.

Another gauging station is located in Uigat (67 km from Tulun), a village on the banks of the Kirei River, which also overflowed its banks. The village of Evdokimova especially suffered from this river, where the flood took the first two lives (the latest official figures - 23 dead in the entire Irkust region).

• The water is already receding, but many roads in Tulun still look like rivers
• © Ekaterina Vinokurova / RT

So, the first flooding began on June 18-23 after heavy rains. June 26, the water level in the river Oia continues to grow. All data is transmitted to the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the city administration.

On June 27, flooding begins in Tulun itself, and from 15:00 local time, an emergency mode is introduced in the city. Mayor Yury Karikh states: "... On average, water arrives in 2 hours at 10 cm ... Residents living in places prone to flooding need to be prepared for evacuation."

The flooding of the LDK area begins.

June 28th floods villages in Tulunsky district, water overflows through the dam. By evening, already floods the federal highway, the area of ​​the LDK, the area of ​​the Meat Processing Plant. There is an evacuation of residents. The next morning, many houses go under the water. Domestic animals are massively dying: people in a panic did not untie the chain dogs and did not open corrals for cattle, as a result even waterfowl geese and ducks are killed.

Now the subject of the main dispute in the city is whether the alert system worked or not, was the evacuation started in time?

Even the inhabitants of the flooded areas themselves adhere to different versions.

So, the version of the city administration: warned people about evacuation even a few days later, volunteers were involved, including even “schoolchildren with pipes” (special devices were distributed to students and schoolchildren, they are also called “quacks” by people) but some residents refused to evacuate, not believing that the houses would be completely under water.

Version of local residents: someone heard the evacuation signals, someone not, there was no total detour of people. At the Parus shop in the LDK area - here is the border of the flooded territory - the victims of the dispute begin with me: someone “heard a pipe”, someone “was not warned”.

One of the operational staff, who is not a Tulun resident, gives me a third, intermediate version:

“After the fire in the Zimnyaya Chery shopping center across the country, shopping centers were checked for safety. In the Irkutsk region, many of them were then closed due to irregularities prior to elimination. In our region, landslides, mudflows, flooding occur all the time, but the training of municipal officials to clear behavior in such a situation "passes" rather only on paper, and civilians are not always able to get their bearings in time. They are told: in a day you will have the most serious emergency in the history of the city. And they, since they did not pass the real teachings, cannot quickly navigate and organize everything. This applies not only to the Tulun district, it is everywhere. ”

After flood

Now the streets of Tulun (more precisely, what used to be streets) look like after the bombing. “Big Water” swept away wooden houses with characteristic Siberian rectangular patterns on shutters in one pile.

• Many houses in Tulun were completely destroyed, all the wreckage is to be collected with the help of equipment.
• © Ekaterina Vinokurova / RT

Sometimes a pan, a spare part from a bed, a child's toy, or a piece of parquet look at you from a pile of slivers. Hundreds of destinies turned into fragments overnight, which are loaded by an indifferent excavator. The water moved the stone houses away, one of them pulled right onto the road. From the stores were left alone. Broken windows look at the submerged roads.

All local residents face, on the one hand, focused, and on the other - as if a little surprised. Someone, right in slippers and a dressing-gown, climbs through the window of his home to pick up the kitchen utensils.

Many are perplexed wandering around the points of issue of humanitarian aid.

Dirty dogs run around with crazy eyes. From the flood zone, many were rescued by volunteers from the Irkutsk nursery (and part of the orphanage) K-9. Dogs and cats were removed from rooftops and loaded into boats. Now many animals have been taken to Irkutsk - before meeting with the old owners or to search for new ones. And in the center of Tulun they will build a temporary cage for stray dogs so that people can pick them up as soon as they can.

Central water supply only restored. For drinking water is unsuitable even in boiled state. Military water transport with the words "drinking water" or "technical water" - a source of water. They stand all over the city.

“If the queue is built up and the passage is through, in an hour the tank ends,” the young military man tells me. His unit came from Kemerovo.

Another problem is the lack of electricity, even in homes that are not affected by flooding. It is difficult to prepare food: food cannot be stored, everyone understands that if the most strict hygiene measures are not observed, an epidemic may begin. About to wash your hair, there is no question.

“Gas cylinders have risen in price! Up to 128 rubles per bottle, and it will be enough only to feed the family once, ”women are angry at the store. According to them, one such cylinder should cost no more than 60 rubles.

Dead animals exported sanitary epidemiological station. Everywhere everything is treated with chlorine. But some of the corpses still float down the river. Another problem - wooden toilets are washed away in the villages and in the private sector of the city, and with them all the impurities. Affected the flood and the local cemetery.

It is impossible to turn away. Everywhere you look - people with lost faces and heaped wooden houses.

• Many in Tulun have lost all their property in general, only thanks to humanitarian aid people have something to put on
• © Ekaterina Vinokurova / RT

Lost everything. People grumble, unhappy with the amount of compensation determined by the government. For each person killed in the flood will allocate 1 million rubles, as well as funds for the burial. Benefits for the diseased: for light damage to health 200 thousand rubles per person, moderate damage or severe - 400 thousand rubles per person. One-time financial assistance - 10 thousand rubles, compensation for lost housing with partial loss - 50 thousand rubles, with a complete loss - 100 thousand.

These compensations are not enough to build up anew, and people have lost not only their homes, but also all their property.

There are a lot of old people here.

“Where will I go from here?” My whole life has passed here, ”says Ksenia Alekseevna in a bright dress and scarf.

She and her husband live with her sister, but they don’t represent how to restore the economy that has gone under the water. Of course, relatives will help, but rebuilding a house is not so easy.

Another cause for dissatisfaction is the work of the “appraisal commissions”.

“They look outside, saying: the house is complete. But they do not go inside, ”the locals resent.

“And we haven't been able to reach us for a week, and we want to start cleaning. We decided that we would begin, okay, that these compensations are for us, ”the people at the shopping center said.

• Just repairing the flood for the majority of victims will not turn around. Many families will have to build houses anew
• © Ekaterina Vinokurova / RT

It is the spaces around the shopping centers that have become the points of elemental collection of tuluns.

In general, people here do not experience any aggression or distrust towards journalists, as is sometimes the case. Of course, not everyone believes that I came “from the very” Moscow (“And I am the Pope!”, One of the victims answered me), but they immediately surround me and begin to speak out.

It creates a clear feeling that the groups of victims who gather in temporary centers, in the squares around the shops, do not have enough conversation, ideally, with professional psychologists or people who know how to conduct a public dialogue with the nervous crowd. The main forces of the operational headquarters are now thrown precisely at the rubble. And psychologists to people wandering around the points of distribution of humanitarian aid are very necessary. They lost everything.

Volunteers

The victim assistance headquarters is located in the city administration building. People stand in line to claim damage. Everything is serious: there are military vehicles - on the contrary, the military police are guarded by another, non-civilian headquarters.

Periodically, out of the doors of the city administration remove all new victims with lost persons. They are handed the same purple bags with basic items and are taken to the Central Hotel. Sometimes - under the arms.

Another building - the children's library - was given to the headquarters of very young volunteers. They are coordinated by Elena Motienko.

“I am very angry with the press,” she immediately tells me. - All our words are taken out of context, through all channels the city administration is accused of the absence of evacuation. Say at least that we have good children. Our twelve-year-olds are helping people now, even if they themselves have suffered. Write that we are bad - say, at least, that the children are good.

• One of the places of distribution of humanitarian aid and hot food in Tulun
• © Ekaterina Vinokurova / RT

And yet in Tulun, there are people who smile. Alexander, I meet in one of the points of issue of humanitarian aid and the distribution of food.

“So, guys, we have a car with new clothes, if anyone needs it, unload it, if it is not necessary, we are at the Meat Factory,” a smiling middle-aged man jumps out of the car.

He tells me that he himself works as a surgeon in Tulun. Immediately, as soon as the flood began, he decided to give up leave and rushed to help, deliver humanitarian supplies.

“Separately, I want to thank my 1989 issue of the Irkutsk Medical University! Collected new shoes, new things - right from the store and sent. Thank you, classmates! ”- Alexander says that he sleeps these days for 2-3 hours, but he looks cheerful. Already killed the entire suspension on the car, but, if necessary, it will break the second, only to help the townspeople.

In Tulun, there are many different groups of volunteers who are more coordinated among themselves than with superiors.

“We don’t have time on the social network. We just give each other phones, form lists, asking people for registration, so that everything is clear. They give us applications, who need what: clothes, diapers, hygiene products, shampoo, soap, food - then we tell other groups, and they bring everything up, ”tells Natalia, a blonde in a red sports suit, giving me parallel essentials: toilet paper, soap, products.

Next to the point of issue - street dining where they feed everyone. While handing out borsch, girls are already cleaning potato buckets - for dinner. They gave out smoking plastic bowls to two grandmothers.

“We are Christians, we organized a dining room for the poor on weekends, and now we are just helping our neighbors,” Anastasia and Valery tell me.

Anastasia is a young girl with bright strands of short hair, Valery is a squat, pumped up man.

Approaching staff Rosguards. Now chase, out of habit, I think. They will ask permission for the event and tell them to wind down the informal initiative. But employees also get food.

“Guys, we still brought a car with the essentials, who wants to help unload it?” - two cars immediately drive into the platform in front of the Zenit store, from which tall strong men come out.

“Do you all know each other here?” I ask.

“Now you know each other! - say the guys. “We are from Irkutsk, we have our own business, so we decided to help our fellow countrymen.”

Such help is here - on every corner.

That is why I do not believe in the sale of humanitarian aid. There really is a lot of it, and no one will pay money for what you can get for free.

An unpleasant incident with humanitarian aid occurred in Irkutsk: on the fact that the Irkutsk people themselves brought to the general assembly point, stickers with the symbols of “United Russia” appeared, but this was a single incident, everything was quickly stopped.

• Warehouse with humanitarian aid in Tulun
• © Ekaterina Vinokurova / RT

The building of the shop "Magnit" was given as a humanitarian aid warehouse for free. Ruslan Pakulov - a very tall man working in the department of physical culture, sport and youth policy in the city of Cheremkhovo, Irkutsk region, barely manages to talk with me. A wagon came from Kemerovo - local entrepreneurs sent waffles and sweets to the victims.

“I can’t see this sweet,” Ruslan laughs and continues to unload.

Next to him work yesterday, unfamiliar women, men, even children. Unloaded - sorted. Sorted - sent on passenger cars to distribute.

As always happens in such situations, there is a shortage in terms of the positions of humanitarian aid, in part - an overabundance.

The points of issue are chosen instinctively: according to the places where the victims accumulate.

Here at the store are mountains of clothes and shoes - both for children and adults. Locals mostly choose practical jeans and swear that they have sent high heel shoes.

“I have a house repaired! It would be better if rubber boots were handed over, ”the woman grumbles, but soon she chooses a bright dress for a little girl.

People circling around humanitarian aid, discussing with each other the choice as if they met in a shopping center, and “everything is fine”. Now in Tulun, this is also a form of "normal life."

But the blankets and bedding is not enough. Even those who have flooded only one floor, it is damp, just nothing to sleep on. People have to huddle in temporary shelters until everything is dry.

• In Tulun and the surrounding area, there are such oddities: only a few of the elements have been carried away by the elements, the rest are in their places
• © Ekaterina Vinokurova / RT

Stronger volunteers, mostly those with experience in emergency response, help break down the rubble. In recent days, they have moved from Tulun itself to nearby villages - to Evdokimova, Red October and others. There works a lot. They complain that they have just been given vaccine against dysentery only now (although vaccination of city residents has been provided). And everyone didn’t have enough, and in city pharmacies there is no chloramphenicol - a universal antibacterial agent.

In the villages with hygiene everything is very bad, it is better to reduce any risks of an epidemic.

“Vaccines were brought to headquarters, but at that time the guys and I were out of Tulun. I have now placed new volunteers who came from Irkutsk at the headquarters working specifically for Tulun, they are said to have run out of vaccines for them, ”says a resident of Bratsk, a volunteer Andrei Tsarenko.

Tsarenko, as soon as he found out about the flood, rushed off to Tulun with his friends and took people off the roofs of the houses on the boat. Now parses the rubble. Andrei, his friends and their new acquaintances live simply: on the floor in the administrative buildings.

They sleep three hours, there are no living conditions. Guys do not care: "we burn out - we will leave." And now I should help my own.

Volunteers came even from the neighboring Kemerovo region.

EMERCOM employees when I finished disassembling the next house into logs and stopped to take a break in the hot sun (this is another reason why everything so quickly continues to decompose and deteriorate).

• EMERCOM employees dismantle destroyed houses in Tulun
• © Ekaterina Vinokurova / RT

Run the copter to remove Tulun from above. Here we are surrounded by local boys.

“I saw one on TV,” one confusedly says.

"Yes, he will not fly," argues with him the other.

In parallel to us is the eldest from the Emergencies Ministry group. “Now they will be chased,” I think habitually. But no, after learning that we are journalists, a young guy begins to find out from us the model of the copter and talk about his teachings. Tulun boys almost shove him away from the control panel, but everyone has forgotten about us. What a deal kopter!

Having rested, the Ministry of Emergency Situations resumes work, and children switch to something else and are carried away on bicycles. Life goes on even among mold and water.

The one who spreads the rumors

For all the time in Irkutsk and Tulun, I encounter only one person who causes human rejection in me. In Irkutsk, there is a fairly well-known blogger Artem Pavlechko. He leads the Siberian Fat Channel, actively criticizes Governor Sergei Levchenko (it was Pavlechko who published the governor’s photo next to the dead bear), then became famous for the conflict with the traffic police (the blogger claimed that he was “hunted by the authorities”; according to the traffic police, he rode off headlights). In the early days, a blogger, like many Irkutsk people, published on his channel words of support for the tulunchanians and called on everyone to go to their rescue.

However, closer to weekends, Tulun and Irkutsk publics began to spread “recording a conversation with an EMERCOM employee”, according to which, allegedly “400-500 people in Tulun find whole houses with corpses, and the authorities secretly take them out and hide the truth”. Unfortunately, for the time being, this is more reminiscent of the story of the fire in the Winter Cherry shopping center, when approximately the same clips were published about hundreds of victims hidden by the authorities, which led to mass rallies. Then, in the end, it turned out that the video was distributed by the Ukrainian pranker Yevgeny Volnov.

I wrote Pavlechko through social networks to clarify his sources of information. I quote below our dialogue.

“Good day, I am a journalist RT. Yesterday you posted on your YouTube channel a post about the concealment of the dead by the authorities. Where did you get this entry? ”

“Sent a friend. He said that this is the EMERCOM conversation ... Logically this information is true, obviously there are not 20 people there or, as they say, 22 have died. There, on some cottages, only Nemer people died, water surrounded people on all sides, there was no help at all ... Only they got 6-8 corpses from their gardens, someone said more than 500 bodies, someone said more than 800. We traveled cars were taken by corpses without numbers, they were roadblocks, clearly, people spent explanatory conversations so that they would not say what they saw with their own eyes. So in the sense of listening - 20 people died, nothing happened ... "

“Do you understand that this looks very similar to Winter Cherry?” Have you personally seen? Your friend from there? "

“And you do not understand that in“ Winter Cherry ”there were in fact many victims. Eyewitnesses said that the children were closed in cinemas, there were more children than officially stated ... People are not fools, this is to say, the special services specifically shut people's mouths, allegedly some kind of comedian from Ukraine spread fake information. And not from somewhere, from Ukraine, on which they are trying to incite us all the time. You believe it, I do not believe it. And now, at any opportunity, when there will be really big victims, the authorities will hide these victims and reproach this “Winter Cherry”. That's all. Good luck to you".

“Do you understand that your messages can contribute to panic?” And what is impossible to hide the victims? "

There was no answer.

• Consequences of flooding in the city of Tulun in the Irkutsk region
• RIA News
• © Kirill Shipitsin

I have few illusions about power. But Tulun is a very small city, but less is left of it. Yes, the debris has not yet been dismantled. And yes, there can be people buried under their own houses under the rubble. Not completed and analysis of debris in drowned villages. But all the analyzes are open, without enclosing, Tulun is flooded with alien volunteers, and rumors spread through a small settlement (a little more than 40 thousand inhabitants) at such a speed without any social networks that it was physically impossible to smuggle out hundreds of corpses in this situation without any social networks. Both in the Ministry of Emergency Situations and in the military police, which is now in Tulun, and among the volunteers who are clearing the rubble, I was denied information about “hiding hundreds of corpses”.

PS

I am getting ready to leave Tulun: we are waiting for 400 km of the route, on a part of it - heavy rain. In Irkutsk we will be dark. I take a farewell look at the city administration, it is also the headquarters. On the steps lies a sad thin black dog. Such everywhere in Tulun. Whether its owners will be found is unknown.

Now the dogs in Tulun are afraid of the human voice and the approach of a man, but I decide to call him and talk affectionately.

Suddenly something flashes in the dog's eyes, he ceases to look semi-insane and lost. Slightly wags its tail.

“Good, good,” I say.

He turns on his back and puts me in the stomach. I am stroking a dirty, tainted animal, hoping it won't bite. Suddenly the dog begins to lick my hands, at first uncertainly, then more and more readily.

The dog follows me to the car. Of course, we give him all our sandwiches: in Irkutsk there will already be hot food.

The dog first pounces without disassembling - eating sausage or cucumbers. By the third sandwich, Chernysh is already pressing to his feet and gently taking the sausage from under the bread.

This scene is observed by officers of the military police, also at first with caution, you never know. By the third sandwich begin to smile and laugh at us.

Volunteers pass by. Black dog, already waving his tail boldly, runs after them.

Rebuild and will live.