Translated material
Political failure
Russia has stopped funding seismic safety work
The seismic strengthening campaign for cities and towns in Kamchatka may fail before it even begins. By its decision, the Regional Commission for Emergency Situations froze all competitions among contractors for work to strengthen the resistance of buildings to the impacts of underground elements. As Natalya Ermolenko, Deputy Governor of the Kamchatka Region, reported, such measures had to be taken due to the complete lack of funding for these expenses.The start of the seismic strengthening campaign was announced in early December by the Governor of the Kamchatka Region, Mikhail Mashkovtsev. He said that the federal government promised to allocate 25 billion rubles for the program to strengthen buildings and infrastructure, and to carry out the work in a short time, a maximum of four years. The need for seismic strengthening of Kamchatka towns and cities was one of the first to be spoken about by the Presidential Plenipotentiary Representative in the Far Eastern Federal District, Kamil Iskhakov, back in the spring of this year, while visiting areas of Koryakia that suffered from the devastating April earthquake. Then Mr. Iskhakov drew attention to the fact that at least 300 multi-apartment residential buildings - primarily in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky itself - need urgent work to strengthen seismic safety.
After the earthquake in Koryakia, special services examined all multi-storey buildings on the peninsula. As Nikolai Trapeznikov, deputy head of the construction department of the regional administration, said, in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky alone, at least half a thousand buildings need urgent reconstruction. Moreover, entire microdistricts of old Khrushchev-era buildings located on unstable soils are cheaper to demolish than to strengthen to the predicted ten-point seismicity level.
The first tranche of financing is 200 million rubles. - regional authorities expected to receive it in December of this year. As Mikhail Mashkovtsev reported, he had to go to the preparation of design and estimate documentation. “ First of all, seismic reinforcement of the runway of Elizovo Airport will be carried out . We must have a guarantee that if a devastating earthquake occurs, planes will still be able to land here at the airport,” the governor said. But as Mr. Trapeznikov said at the last meeting of the Commission on Emergency Situations, the funds at his department’s disposal are only sufficient to strengthen the foundations and frame of two buildings in the coming year - one school and one kindergarten in the regional center.
The problem is that the federal target program “Seismic Safety of the Territory of Russia” is ceasing to exist this year; instead, the Ministry of Regional Development is preparing a new one - “Reducing the Risks of the Consequences of Emergency Situations.” But funding for this program will begin only in 2008.
Meanwhile, the Russian Far East, primarily Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands, are living in anticipation of a catastrophic earthquake. As Viktor Chubrov, a member of the Kamchatka branch of the Russian Expert Council for Seismic Hazard Assessment, assured, based on the fact that “such a strong earthquake has not happened for a long time, it is bound to happen in the near future.” On the Kuril Islands, Far Eastern rescuers are on constant alert due to the increasing frequency of tremors, and vibrations on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean near the eastern coast of Kamchatka are observed almost daily, or even several times a day.
At the same meeting of the Kamchatka Commission for Emergency Situations, where the actual false start of the regional seismic strengthening program was announced, the director of the Kamchatka tsunami protection station, Viktor Feofanov, announced the peninsula’s readiness for a possible attack by giant waves. After the catastrophic tsunami in Southeast Asia in December 2004, a constant information exchange was established between the warning center in Kamchatka and similar centers in other parts of Russia, Japan, America, and New Zealand. But if, as Mr. Feofanov noted, the exchange of information with colleagues from Tokyo, Palmer or from the Hawaiian Islands among Kamchatka forecasters is carried out at a maximum speed of ten minutes, then the interior regions of the peninsula may receive warnings about the emergence of a giant wave in the ocean critically late. For example, the fishing port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, which is located just a few kilometers from the tsunami warning station, can receive information about the possible approach of a rogue wave only 25 minutes after receiving a threat signal. In this case, a tsunami can reach the eastern coast of Kamchatka 27 minutes after an underwater earthquake. According to employees of the Kamchatka tsunami warning station, the ASOC warning system has been operating on the peninsula since the mid-1960s without major repairs.