31.01.2006
Vulnerabilities in City’s Infrastructure Exposed

From The St. Petersburg Times

No home was left unaffected by the threat of water, heating or electricity cuts as January’s deep freeze increased pressure on communal service companies and exposed vulnerabilities in the city’s communal infrastructure.

Residents faced 20 times as many power failures than usual during the recent cold spell, Interfax reported last week, citing official statistics. The emergency services received about 1,000 calls every day.

From Jan. 17 to Jan. 24, 2,855 failures occurred with 5,788 houses at some point being left without electricity, and 1,135 houses without heating. Fontanka.ru reported that almost no city district was left untouched by the failures, some of which knocked out whole districts.

“With many newly-built homes equipped with electric ovens and subject to energy-saving cuts in central heating, the temperature in some apartments could fall down to four degrees above zero,” Fontanka.ru reported.

“I live in one of the 40 houses in Krasnogvardeisky district that were left for four days without heating. People were calling on their neighbors with candles and joked that if the water was also cut off then that would just complete the picture,” said Roman Zakharov, city resident and editor-in-chief of “Protocol and Etiquette” monthly magazine. The temperature in his apartment fell to 12 degrees, Zakharov said.

Of added concern to citizens was that the company in charge of communal service repairs often proved of little use in restoring supply.

Vyacheslav, a resident of a house in Bolshaya Konyushennaya ulitsa, reported that his apartment was left without water for several days. He called the communal services to request a plumber only for the latter not to turn up. Instead Vyacheslav received a call from the woman who had registered his complaint.

“She was drunk. She asked if I was waiting for a plumber then declared that he would not come. When asked why she said he had just died and other service employees were paying their respects. She was very drunk and seemed very satisfied with herself,” he recollected.

The next day Vyacheslav tried to order another plumber. This time a woman asked him if he had heard a TV warning broadcast by city authorities. It told residents not to switch off the cold water tap so as to prevent the water freezing.

Vyacheslav replied that he did not have a TV set. The woman said that that “does not count in his favor.”

Vyacheslav was not alone in his suffering.

On Jan. 12 residents of 8 Ulitsa Poltavskaya appealed to the State Housing Stock Inspector, as well as both city and district authorities, to complain about the absence of water.

“We’ve had no water for about one month and, as the communal services put it, since the building consists of only six flats nobody will seriously consider our problem,” resident Lilia Azizova said.

The cold water supply was switched off on Dec. 27 because of an accident, Azizova said. The block’s management company N9 offered to fix the problem by Dec. 31 but that did not happen.

On Dec. 30 the communal service company N3 informed residents that repair works would be resumed only after the New Year holidays (on Jan. 11). It explained that a vital tap was located on the territory of the Industry and Construction Bank, which prohibited repairs during the holidays because of security concerns.

However, on Jan. 12 still no cold water was forthcoming. The communal service companies in charge gave contradictory explanations and did not tell residents when the problem would be solved.

Roman Zakharov recollected other failures in communal infrastructure.

“Last year it took one month for some residents of the Petrogradsky district to prove to both the communal service company and the Vodokanal water monopolist that their property was not being supplied with water. Both companies regarded the situation as some kind of mystery and said the problem could not have been down to them.”

“Only following the publication of the story in a local newspaper was water supply restored to the block,” Zakharov said.

The absence of coordination between the two companies was a result of communal sector reform.

“The City Housing Stock Agency is no longer responsible for communal service companies since formally the latter are private firms, even though owned by the city,” Zakharov said.

“This situation is exploited by city authorities. In the case of violations in the standards of communal service they just redirect citizens to the courts. City authorities no longer have the power to solve the problem through their own rulings,” he said.

The quality of communal services remains low. According to statistics, during the first nine months of 2005 Rospotrebnadzor registered 1,148 violations in housing stock and maintenance of residential territory, Interfax reported.

About 4,300 people called Rospotrebnadzor, most of them complaining about property maintenance, and the appearance of rats and ticks in residential zones.

Among other violations Rospotrebnadzor officers identified 22 locations where residential garbage is illegally dumped. According to Interfax the communal services often take too long to clear away garbage and repair its containers.

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