“There is no way out of the yard — only on a snowmobile,” Veronika’s vacation in the Murmansk region dragged on involuntarily. On Monday, after a very snowy weekend, a heavy snowstorm began. Because of this ordinary, in fact, the events of thousands of people were cut off from the world.
Snow in winter in the Arctic can still surprise you. Judging by the collapse caused by heavy snowfall in the Murmansk region,
officials, relatively recently imported into the region from more climatically favorable places, turned out to be completely unprepared for the fact that snowdrifts would have to be removed and roads cleaned.< /p>
In a few hours, all transport arteries of the region were blocked, except for the railway. In the afternoon, January 17, due to snow drifts, the Kola-Murmashi, Apatity-Kirovsk, Ura-Guba-Vidyaevo, Mishukovo-Snezhnogorsk-Gadzhiyevo roads and several sections of the federal highway were closed for travel: both at the entrance to Murmansk and to the side the village of Nikel and the border with Norway.
In addition, for almost two hundred kilometers of the federal road, the movement of freight transport was prohibited. The road to Teriberka is also closed, but this is not news: you can get into the village or leave it only in an organized column since January 8. At the same time, hundreds of tourists are in the village 120 km from Murmansk and are striving to get into it — a widely advertised point on the map is intensively presented by the regional authorities as the main tourist brand of the region. But there are no guarantees of a safe and timely transfer. It got to the point that private traders offered to take out those who wished to leave the village by helicopter — for 55 thousand rubles per person.
However, getting to Murmansk is half the battle. Snowfall for a day paralyzed the work of Murmansk airport. Six flights were canceled, 11 were delayed for many hours. As a result, by the opening of the message, a huge number of people dreaming of flying had accumulated at the terminal.
Paralyzed Murmansk Airport. Photo: Blogger 51/VK The latter is the most extreme, but also the most relevant: a thaw is predicted the other day, and threatening icicles hang from the roofs.
Meanwhile, utilities capitulated in the battle with snow, and people took up shovels. True, recalculation for the lack of cleaning yards or many days of non-collection of garbage is not to be expected. The scavengers nod at the road builders, the road builders — at the «managers», in the end, of course, the weather turns out to be extreme. True, behind this dispute one somehow forgets that in winter it always snows in the Arctic, there is a lot of it. And the high tariffs for housing and communal services and waste management mean that this snow will be cleaned and garbage will be taken out, regardless of the climate.