“In Derbent they didn’t even declare mourning for the dead”

The flood in Krymsk did not teach the authorities of regions prone to such emergencies anything. On October 10, mud flows demolished half of the ancient city of Derbent in Dagestan. Residents have still not received adequate help; they pump water out of the basements of their houses on their own and claim that there was no notification. And the local authorities could not even accommodate the volunteers who arrived for the night.

Due to heavy rains and mudflows on the night of October 9-10, part of the ancient city of Derbent was under water - six people died, more than 300 houses were flooded and more than a thousand people were in the flood zone. Local residents claim that the scale of the tragedy is much greater than the authorities estimate. However, there is still no official data on the number of flood victims in Derbent.

"There was no warning system"

As in the case of Krymsk, the tragedy in which shocked the entire country and caused a boom in volunteerism, the residents of Derbent did not notice the warning about the approaching disaster. Although local authorities claim that they warned people. "There was no warning system. The authorities say that someone drove through the streets and announced through loudspeakers that there were announcements from all the minarets, from all the mosques. I didn’t hear. My colleagues and friends didn’t hear either. They say there was a ticker on local TV channels, but it was already after 23.00, when everything had already happened, no one remembers whether they let her in or not,” Magomed Khanmagomedov, editor-in-chief of the Derbent newspaper Freedom Square, told PublicPost.

The morning after the tragedy, when EMERCOM forces began clearing the rubble and searching for the dead, the situation in Derbent was declared stable: no disruptions in the gas, water or energy supply to the houses were found. The authorities decided to refuse the forces of the central Ministry of Emergency Situations, which planned to send two planes with rescuers to Derbent. And a few days after the tragedy in Derbent, where all this time local residents complained about the lack of drinking water (the pumping station has not yet been restored), the head of Dagestan Magomedsalam Magomedov arrived. He promised to provide one-time assistance - one million rubles to the families of the victims, and one hundred thousand rubles to the victims. But the list of victims was never published, and later a different amount appeared in the decree of the government of Dagestan - no more than 25 thousand rubles per family that lost property. “I have not yet seen a single person who has received compensation,” Khanmagomedov comments on authorities’ reports that the first families received money. “I don’t know such people, and no one told me. The only thing I know is that the administration called the family, where a woman drowned in a basement on Krupskaya Street, and they said that a million rubles had arrived. It’s good if the money is given to people without any conditions, but I suspect that it will be different - that they will demand bribes to get compensation.”

"There is not enough special equipment in Derbent"

The editor-in-chief of the Derbent newspaper was outraged by the way the authorities behaved after the tragic situation, essentially leaving the solution to the problem to the victims themselves. “Large-scale work is not visible in the city, although in some places you can see special equipment,” he says. “But mostly people themselves cleaned out basements flooded with silt.” “Many people complain that the Ministry of Emergency Situations equipment arrives, but they are missing something - a hose, or something else - and they go back. Some even said that they hired cars for their own money and pumped water out of the basements. But such Only fire services have the equipment, and they are obliged to do it for free,” says Magomed Khanmagomedov. Local residents say that basement cleaning services cost 25 thousand rubles. Meanwhile, the local Ministry of Emergency Situations is accepting applications from residents to pump out water and promises to clear the rubble by October 21. At the same time they promise to launch a pumping station, but for now they provide 12 thousand residents with imported water.

“On the first weekend after the flood, a group of volunteers from Makhachkala, about a hundred people, came to Derbent,” public figure and volunteer Luiza Dibirova told PublicPost. “These were mainly students of the Dagestan State University, students of the Dagestan Civil University, and public figures. Volunteers contacted the local Ministry of Emergency Situations, but instead of sending volunteers directly to the victims, they were assigned to clear the road, although this should be done by special equipment from the Ministry of Emergency Situations and Housing and Communal Services." “No matter what the local authorities say, there is not enough special equipment in Derbent. The leadership of Dagestan refuses federal assistance and the assistance of neighboring republics. They say that everything is fine with us,” added Luiza Dibirova.

“The volunteers weren’t even provided with overnight accommodation”

Louise calls the behavior of local authorities illiterate. And the point is not only that, instead of specific victims, volunteers were sent to clear the road. “When the volunteers arrived, the local authorities not only could not provide a headquarters, they did not even provide a primitive shelter. And the volunteers were forced to return back to Makhachkala,” says Dibirova. “Educational institutions in Derbent did not cancel classes, although they could have mobilized students for help to their city. They didn’t do this. Now the city is in such a state that one street is being cleared, but others are not.” “They trumpet loudly that they are providing assistance, but in reality they demonstrate complete disorganization and inability to work in a critical situation,” adds Khanmagomedov.

In Makhachkala, volunteers opened a collection point for victims of Derbent and an account on Yandex.Money to purchase rubber boots, shovels and gloves for volunteers and local residents. In Derbent itself, the aid station for victims is still not open. In the city they collect neither food, nor warm clothes, nor bed linen. Residents of the unflooded part of Derbent say that they are ready to help, but they have no experience in organizing such points, and the authorities are in no hurry to help them with this. “Centers for comprehensive social protection of the population could open such a point, but they are used to dividing one banana among three pensioners and stealing the other. And now, when a critical situation has arrived, they are not visible,” Magomed Khanmagomedov, editor-in-chief of Freedom Square, is perplexed. And Luiza Dibirova adds that recently a help point was opened in the city administration. But they mainly serve food there.

“The nightmare is that in Derbent they didn’t even declare mourning for the dead. They didn’t even apologize, no one came out and said: “People, forgive me, this is our carelessness, our irresponsibility.” Even this did not happen,” says Magomed Khanmagomedov .