If a Ulan-Ude resident does not go to the sea in July-August, the sea comes to him itself. Yesterday, July 22, Ulan-Ude turned into Venice.
True, instead of gondolas, trams were floating along the streets. And this is no joke. A relatively light downpour, which local authorities naturally dubbed “anomalous”, flooded the city up to the ankles, as if a real hurricane had passed through Ulan-Ude. The city center is in puddles, the train station, just rebuilt at considerable expense, is flooded again. The city residents found themselves hostages to the negligence of the city authorities, unprepared for the natural disaster. The flow of water turned the streets into rivers, flooding underground passages and tram tracks.
And all this happened during rush hour, when the streets are already overcrowded with traffic. And yet, just recently, after the catastrophic floods of 2022 and 2023, Mayor of Ulan-Ude Igor Shutenkov assured that the storm drains had been repaired and the problems had been resolved.
Entire oceans were spilling out in the city centre. People were wading through the water, looking for detours, crossing streets on curbs. Cars were falling into potholes on washed-out roads. And trams were standing still because the rails were flooded. Traffic was closed in key areas – Elevator, Lyceum, intersection of Sakhyanova and Klyuchevskaya streets. That is, in essence, tram traffic in the city was paralyzed.
Storm drains have once again failed to cope with the traditional summer rains. Every downpour is a disaster for city residents. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Shutenkov's contractors manage to bury storm drains in asphaltas if they don't know what it's for. Buried storm drains on Borsoev, Dobrolyubov, Traktovaya streets are just a small part of the discovered fails of Shutenkov's builders. And how many of them were buried quietly?
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The city was completely unprepared for the disaster, although the problem is considered to be long-standing. City authorities simply do not care about preventing such disasters.
The mayor of the capital of Buryatia, Igor Shutenkov, instead of promptly organizing the elimination of the consequences of the downpour, started PR on his telegram channelbragging about the work of public utilities. Shutenkov mentioned that there are six vacuum machines, four pumps and three graders in the city. However, they only worked on the central streets. And what should the rest of the residents do, whose lives every summer turn into swimming in puddles?
When the mayor assured that the puddles had been eliminated on all central streets, messages appeared on social networks that city residents were trapped by streams of water on the streets of Zherdeva, Baltakhinova, Klyuchevskaya, near the store “Interior” and the market “Tuyaa”, as well as at the 502 kilometerIn fact, Shutenkov managed to demonstrate the effectiveness of public utilities.
But at what cost. Measures to prevent such situations would be more useful for the citizens.
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The current mayor is overly keen on “cosmetology” to the detriment of real city problems, in order to make the capital of the republic more beautiful for tourists and federal bosses. If in September 2024 the city council deputies re-elect Shutenkov, then Ulan-Ude residents will again suffer accidents in housing and communal services, drive on bad roads, get injured on slippery streets, drown in puddles due to broken sewers, breathe in unmown wormwood in the warm season, and so on.
Such downpours causing chaos in Ulan-Ude are not uncommon. In the summer of 2023, the prosecutor's office found out that broken storm drains in Ulan-Ude were not replaced, and the grates on whole sewers were not tightened. Then the city economy committee headed by Sergei Gashev was ordered to pay a fine of 300 thousand rubles. Negligence in official affairs, unfortunately, is corrected not by fines, but only by the whip and the removal of the guilty from office.
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And each time, city authorities are unprepared for a natural disaster, shifting responsibility onto the shoulders of residents.