In the regions

Save people, not your ass

August 25, 2009 Julia Latynina

On the night of August 18 to 19, at 01.19, that is, 40 hours after the accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station, journalist Mikhail Afanasyev published in his blog the appeal of relatives of people declared missing during the accident.

“On the flooded machine room of the SS of the hydroelectric power station, the knocks of people are heard. They are in the so -called "air pockets" - voids where water did not penetrate. People are at a depth of 4 meters. The exact mark is 321 meters. Divers working in a flooded machine room cannot get to dying people ... There is one way to save people - to close the water supply of the SS of the hydroelectric power station and completely open the shutters at the Minsk hydroelectric power station (nearby). The water level in the machine room will decrease by the saving 4 meters - the water itself will leave the room. ”

On the same day, the prosecutor's office started a criminal case on Afanasyev and two of his colleagues. She found that Afanasyev, “possessing reliable and official information,” “distributed knowingly false information in the Internet magazine, discrediting the honor, dignity and undermining the business reputation of the leadership of the republic and the SSHSP.”

The first thing that can be stated was the authorities signed in its own rare shamelessness. Because at the moment when Mikhail Afanasyev stated that there were alive at the station - the authorities themselves claimed that 64 people were missing , that is, perhaps they were alive, but they could not find them.

It is impossible to simultaneously list a person alive - to improve the statistics provided to the authorities, and the dead - in order not to look for him. If the authorities believed at that moment that all 64 missing people were dead, then it was necessary to declare them dead, and not to lie, that the accident was small, 11 died, but now there were 64 more, but soon they would be found. If the authorities believed at that moment that one of the 64 missing people could be alive, they had to do everything to save his life.

As a result of this criminal case, the deep, generic difference between what is understood by the concept of “missing” in an open society, and what is understood by this phrase in Russia, came out. In an open society, “missing” means the following: there is no corpse, therefore, a person is alive, and everything must be done to save him. In Russia, “missing” - “died, but there is no corpse, so we will not spoil statistics.” People are saved in open society. In Russia - its ass.

The second, the most remarkable, this is the phrase about "reliable information." And what, the authorities had reliable information at this moment? Then tell me why the 900-ton rotor flew around the hall like a bird? Ah, still don't know? And where, how and under what circumstances did all 64 “missing” died, did you know at that moment? Not either? That is, “reliable” information, of all 6 billion people on Earth, at that moment, only journalist Afanasyev possessed - and lied, son of a bitch?

Finally, on the merits of the issue.

Judging by what experts say - for example, former. The chief engineer of the SSHGES Valentin Stafievsky - the volume of discarded water reached 1 thousand cubic meters per second. And not that “air bags”-concrete did not remain at the lower marks, and if someone survived there by a miracle, then most likely, by the night of August 19, he suffocated and died of hypothermia.

But they say so now. And immediately after the accident they said something else. “The constructive execution of the engine room and the installation site allows you to form in the premises for air bags,” says Valery Shabalin, head of the Sayano-Shushensky training center RusHydro, on August 20th.

But the certificate of one of the saved in the accident, electrician Nikolai Shin. He was at the 320th mark when, after the explosion, water burst at the door. He and his colleagues were under the ceiling, grabbed the ventilation box. They managed to put their heads into the “pockets” between the 60-centimeter beams, but there were no 10 cm of air below them. After spending an hour in an “air bag”, Shin squeezed under the beams, sailed into the corridor and returned back. After some time, someone closed the barriers, and the water began to subside: the last two of those who were with Shin had already jumped to the floor.

There is one extremely suspicious detail in the SSHGES accident: firstly, our stingy state willingly parted with money this time (here is a million, here is another million, here are five!), That is, the power strategy is clear to ask money.

Secondly, despite the certificates of eyewitnesses (workers who stood in the machine room at the upper marks, they saw with their own eyes how the rotor was taken out), and the fact that the accident was shot on the film still does not have an official assumption about why it occurred.

This gives additional convincing the unofficial version: the troublesome of the turbine. That is, roughly speaking, there were not a single specialist left on the “power machines”, where the GA-2 was repaired, because even in the USSR, a record of such giant units skillfully conduct a few people. We found ourselves in the position of residents of the late Roman Empire or characters of a fantastic film who do not know how to repair the artifacts that were obtained from their ancestors.

The turbine was set. It was clear that the giant vibration, but the turbine continued to operate. On Sunday, it became clear that the vibration reached an unacceptable level, a meeting took place, on Monday the hydraulic unit began to stop normally and, judging by the water, forgot to block the upper gates. The accidents never have one reason: the accident occurs when a terrible chain of accidents is superimposed on deep patterns. It seems that in this case, fatal negligence has overlapped technological backwardness and elementary greed.

What exactly happened? When, where and how everyone died? Was it possible to save someone else? The answers to these questions had to give a criminal case, instituted in the fact of the accident, or a parliamentary investigation. However, judging by how criminal cases are being investigated by Nord-Ost, Beslan, in the crashes of helicopters with high-ranking poachers, such criminal cases are inhabited in order to conceal the truth, and not to restore it. And the parliamentary investigations are prohibited by us just in case.

It will not be difficult for Mikhail Afanasyev and his colleagues (the question is where, in Sayanogorsk or Strasbourg), which, publishing in an atmosphere of universal confusion, the appeal of the relatives distraught from grief, they did not violate the journalistic debt, but fulfilled it. But maybe in the framework of the criminal case they will be more able to: restore the picture of the disaster. The people in Siberia are not Globsky, not like in Moscow, and in Khakassia, the same thing may be repeated as in Beslan, where the farce process turned into a real investigation - thanks to the cohesion of the victims. (Despite, by the way, to the same attempt to ask questions with money.)

In the meantime, the lawsuit of the Khakass authorities recorded a very terrible thing. He recorded the fact that the authorities, refusing to nourish the dead, so as not to spoil the statistics, at the same time is ready to dry anyone who at that moment considers them alive.

Photos of RIA Novosti