First, administrative protocols were drawn up against the roofers. A few days later, a criminal case was opened. Article No. 238 sounds like “performance of work that does not meet safety requirements.” The first part of it provides for punishment of up to two years in prison. If the act is committed by a group of persons by prior agreement, or if serious bodily harm is caused by negligence, or the death of a person follows, the punishment is up to six years in prison.
But in the case of roofers, it is unlikely to reach real terms, says Denis Saushkin, managing partner of the ZKS law office:
“There is also an alternative punishment – doing business without organizing a legal entity or without a license, but the size of the total income is very important there – from 2 million 250 thousand rubles. Naturally, it will be very difficult for self-employed roofers to calculate the total income, so this criminal offense is not applicable to them. They take universal article No. 238 of the Criminal Code and begin to attract. But something tells me that this will be some kind of campaign – two or three criminal cases will be taken to court, the punishment is unlikely to be associated with imprisonment. But even a fine and a criminal record will be enough to make the rest think about it.”
On tours of St. Petersburg roofs, one enterprising roofer can illegally earn 1.5-2 million rubles from April to September. The total capacity of this market is estimated by experts at 250 million rubles per season, wrote Moika 78. In September 2020, two people fell from a roof on Rubinstein Street: a 23-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl. According to investigators, the cause of the tragedy was an unsafely organized excursion.
Alexander Gorshkov, editor-in-chief of the Internet newspaper Fontanka.ru, tells about the situation with roofers in the city:
“There are legal rooftop tours that are sanctioned, approved by the city authorities. But there are also difficulties there, because, as far as I know, the guides in this case agreed with the management company, but did not agree with the owners of the premises. In the event of tension, truth and victory will surely be on the side of the owners. It is necessary to analyze each specific case, but, of course, it is unlikely that the owners of an apartment in the city center will like it when some strangers regularly climb their stairs. Such proposals are especially popular during the celebration of the “Scarlet Sails”. A huge number of swindlers appear who profit from this, collecting money and promising to take them to the roof, from where this holiday will be visible, in fact, then dissolving.
There are many offers on excursions on the Web from 500 rubles per person. Groups are usually up to ten people. The most requested time is at sunset. If the weather changes drastically, the tour will be cancelled. My colleague Anna Morgunova was on such a walk a few years ago. In an hour we visited two different rooftops, plus walked along the beautiful front doors as a bonus. They offered three levels of difficulty: the first is climbing the stairs to a flat roof, the second is a sloping roof, the third is more for climbers, says Anna:
“It had rained the day before, the roof was wet. The guide immediately told us that we shouldn’t step on the joints on the roof – we must step on the iron sheets. There, the grip in the sneakers was excellent. We chose the second level of difficulty. I must say that he followed us very well. He was the first to pass, showing what to hold on to, where to put his foot. All this was slow, accessible. They have an agreement with each other everywhere. Not all neighbors like it, because walking on an iron roof is quite noisy. Somewhere a little quieter they ask to pass. But there everyone knows each other – who, where and what time comes.
As previously reported in Smolny, in the central regions of St. Petersburg there are about 5.5 thousand roofs, more than a thousand are potentially dangerous.