I. Metshin: “We must separate the imperfection in work of municipal services and the nature”

(KZN.RU, November 14, Alsu Safina). Ilsur Metshin, the Mayor of Kazan, called the situation with the weather, which was observed in the city and the republic at the end of last week, the abnormal. Freezing rain was in the capital of Tatarstan on Friday, and strong black ice formed on the roads and sidewalks. “This is an abnormal phenomenon. Fortunately, they are not so often during the winter, but it's still happening”, said the Mayor.

“Winter has not come yet, however, we have felt the entirely charm of winter weather: freezing rain, ice crust, sharp temperature transition from plus to minus and vice versa, and winter frosts”, said the Mayor, opening the Business Monday.

He reminded that as a result of bad weather many areas of city life were paralyzed, the airport was temporarily closed, outages in the electric happened, etc. “Thank God, there were no big accidents on electric systems. We remember all the costs of natural disasters, such as the torn wires”, said Ilsur Metshin, adding that Moscow, Kaluga and other cities found themselves in an even more difficult situation.

The Mayor pointed out that a lot of criticism was delivered to municipal services, enterprises, regional administrations. “But we need to clearly separate imperfection, lack of preparation and the nature”, he assured. “It is impossible to prepare for nature. The only important thing is to meet it together timely and fully prepared”.

Ilsur Metshin stressed that all public service work since the evening and to the morning of November 11 more than 1 thousand tons of reagent was sprinkled on roads and sidewalks. “We monitored the work in real time. The reagent in this weather does not work by itself. The moment cars appeared on the roads, it started to work”, he said.

As for the janitors, the Ilsur Metshin pointed out that there are about 5,200 apartment buildings in Kazan. “It is obvious that we cannot put a janitor to each house”, he added. “Winter has just begun. We need to work closely with the population on the threshold of the test weather conditions, to city residents to use public transport, to not use car without necessity, and promptly respond to the bad weather conditions”, assured the Mayor.

Igor Kulyazhev, the deputy head of the city's Executive Committee and the chairman of the Committee of improvements, said that, according to meteorologist of the RT, 45 mm of rain has fallen since the beginning of the winter period, which corresponds to normal in November. 12 mm of precipitation fell in the form of freezing rain on 10-11 November.

“Work on the processing of roads and sidewalks was conducted from 10 to 13 November to ensure road safety in order to prevent the formation of ice. 3700 tons of deicing material was spent, which is much higher than on ordinary days”, said Igor Kulyazhev.

According to him, 132 complete road vehicles, 60 small-scale mechanization vehicles, 105 tractor brushes were involved in the strewing roads and sidewalks. Also, 12 units of equipment and 23 workers employed in the evacuation of rainwater and meltwater. “On weekends, all the powers of road services were left to clean up the sidewalks. At present the condition of roads and pavements generally satisfactory”, concluded the chairman of the Committee of improvements.