In The Russian City Of Murmansk, Power And Heat Outages For A Third Day

It's the largest city above the Arctic Circle - and it's freezing cold there right now.

Murmansk and the Murmansk Region of the Russian Federation, including the city of Severomorsk, have been partially de-energized since January 23 due to an accident at Rosseti's lines. Five towers of power transmission lines collapsed due to icing, snowstorms and squally winds. The power outage led to the shutdown of boiler houses - residents of the Murmansk region were left without heating and hot water. According to the latest estimates of the regional government, about 73 thousand residents of the region remain without power supply. The authorities are trying to restore power supply by installing temporary transmission line supports. An emergency regime has been introduced in the region. It may take at least a week to fully restore power supply after the accident, said Governor Andrey Chibis. According to him, on the third day of the blackout, power supply was restored to 80% of houses in Murmansk and Severomorsk. Local residents in social networks do not agree with the assessment of the head of the region, writes "Meduza".

Residents of Murmansk and Severomorsk - cities that are located above the Arctic Circle - have been reporting large-scale blackouts of electricity and heat for the third day. All this time in Murmansk, according to "Yandex Weather", the air temperature dropped to -10 °C during the day and to -17 °C at night.

The blackouts began on January 23, after, as explained in "Rosseti", five supports of power lines collapsed in the region. The company cited the weather as the cause of the collapse: wet snow, strong wind and icing of the transmission line supports.

The Investigative Committee said that the fallen supports had been in operation since the 1960s-1980s. At the same time, the service life of such structures is 40 years. After that, every five years they must undergo inspections. Investigators are finding out exactly how these inspections took place. A criminal case has been opened under the article on negligence (part 1 of article 293 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). According to the investigators' version, the responsible employees of Russian Grids failed to take measures to keep the power lines in proper condition and did not promptly respond to emergency outages.

In the first 24 hours, the regional authorities failed to fully solve the problem. On Saturday, January 24, fan shutdowns were introduced in some houses in Murmansk, and the next day the region declared an emergency regime. According to Governor Andrei Chibis, Rosseti specialists are working around the clock, but the situation is "complicated by unfavorable weather conditions and extremely difficult terrain."

On January 26, Rosseti reported that two temporary wooden transmission towers had been installed to replace the collapsed ones. Parts of the poles are being taken to the installation site by all-terrain vehicles, then assembled on the ground and then installed, including by helicopter, the company said. For full completion of work on installation and connection of the main transmission towers will take a week, said Chibis.

Because of the blackout by the forces of entrepreneurs and authorities in the affected communities opened points for charging phones, access to boiling water and warming food. Queues are lining up there. In Murmansk, food packages are given out at such support points, but not enough of them are available everywhere. Bus travel for residents of Murmansk and Severomorsk has been made free of charge. Some educational institutions have suspended their work or switched to remote mode.

Together because of the accident only in Murmansk more than a thousand houses were under the threat of freezing of heat supply systems, the governor said. According to him, by January 26, all residential houses and social facilities have been provided with heat and water, and 80% of houses in Murmansk and Severomorsk have a stable electricity supply.

Local residents in comments under posts in the governor's Telegram channel disagree with this assessment. Some commenters claim that Severomorsk has "half the city without light." The day before, local authorities reported that 117 houses in the city remained without light by the evening of January 25.

One of the readers of the 51.ru publication said: "We cook on a gas burner. Some people still have no water and heating, some have restored something, but everything is constantly shut off. There is no schedule of electricity supply. They only say that it supposedly exists, but no one has seen it". According to her, because of the constant blackouts and cold, she and her small child are forced to leave home to relatives or to a hotel.

With the blackouts, there were reports (1,2,3) of mobile Internet and Telegram messenger failures in the region. However, it is unclear what exactly they are related to - the blackouts or the authorities' actions.

Deputy Governor Olga Vovk says that about 73,000 people remain without light in the region. "But they are not permanently without light, and we are switching them. Houses that are without power supply for quite a long time - there are none," she said.

All key facilities in the Murmansk region, including strategic enterprises, the authorities claim, are provided with electricity. Earlier it was reported that the shutdowns also affected the main naval base of Russia's Northern Fleet. The ships were switched to an autonomous mode of power supply.

Federal TV channels, despite the large-scale and prolonged blackouts, practically do not cover the situation in the Murmansk region, the "Agency" notes. Thus, over the weekend and Monday morning a full-fledged story about what is happening in the region was shown only by Rossiya 1 TV channel and only once - on the morning of January 24. The report took less than two minutes of the newscast time.

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