The emergency situation on the M-4 Don highway in the Rostov region, where a 60-kilometer traffic jam formed on March 30, occurred as a result of a late response from the authorities.
The governor of the region Vasily Golubev spoke about the reasons for the incident, RIA Novosti writes.
According to him, there was also no coordinated work of departments. He noticed that after the beginning of the snowfall, the road was closed too late from the direction of Voronezh and Krasnodar. In addition, Golubev stressed, it took too long to coordinate the measures to clear the route.
“For several hours, the departments agreed on the question “To cut barriers or not to cut?” at the federal level. At least four hours late on the part of “Avtodor” in order to take measures to normalize traffic. You can’t work like this any longer,” the governor said at a meeting of the commission on road safety in the government of the region.
On March 30, a heavy snowfall covered the Rostov region, due to which a state of emergency was introduced in the region. Later, the regional department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs stated that traffic was blocked on the section of the M-4 Don highway from the 907th to the 983rd kilometer due to bad weather. As a result, a traffic jam 60 kilometers long was formed, in which many drivers spent more than a day. Traffic in both directions of the route was restored only on the evening of March 31.
As the Russians who found themselves in a traffic jam said, at some point they began to run out of gasoline, drinking water and food. At the same time, in some cases, shops and gas stations were too far away to reach them on foot in a snowstorm.