Crossing death

The Russians have been drowning in the river for years, through which 20 years they cannot build a bridge. The authorities respond with a quote from the "Master and Margarita"

Residents of the Bashkir city of Birsk and the Birsky district complain for years that they can’t build a bridge in any way: in the spring and autumn the surrounding villages have been cut off from the city of the river, and in winter people are forced to cross over the ice, risking to fall and drown. "Cold" tells how the inhabitants of Bir villages live, to which neither an ambulance nor a ritual service can directly reach, and that local authorities say the construction of the bridge.

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On the morning of January 18, a resident of Bashkir village of Kuskekeevo 43-year-old Sergey S. became bad . In the ambulance, they said that doctors from the hospital in Birsk would not be able to come to Kuskekeevo: the village of Belaya was separated from the city, which can only be moved by an ice crossing, and it is temporarily closed for car travel. To get to the doctor, Sergey and his 63-year-old mother, who went with him, had to independently get to the crossing of 15 kilometers from the village.

Sergei, a veteran of hostilities in Chechnya, has recently been engaged in the transportation of soil on a dump truck. The family did not have their own car. The fellow villager agreed to give them to the river, but the remaining 500 meters on the ice had to go on foot. On the other side of Sergei, the ambulance was to meet with his mother.

Already on the ice it became worse - he began to lose consciousness and fell. Sergey’s mother began to scream that her son was dying. After some time, an ambulance drove up to the shore and a paramedic came out to meet them, but when he reached Sergey, he was already dead. The paramedic stated death and, as eyewitnesses recall , left the body on the ice.

The police, who came to draw up the protocol, helped his mother drag his son’s body to the shore, and one of the neighbors helped to bring him to the morgue.

The ice crossing for cars was closed after another accident, which occurred two weeks earlier. Then, from the side of Birsk, a truck tried to drive across the river - and failed under the ice. The driver who was driving furniture and stationery drowned. On the same day, the head of Bashkortostan Radiy Khabirov came to Birsk-however, not because of those who died on the river, but to visit the dumplings festival.

"Crossed - and went"

Accidents and deaths at the crossing across the Belaya River are regularly occurred - the bridge through it cannot be built for more than 20 years, says Stella Zaitseva, a resident of the village of Pioneer, who is also separated from Birsk as a river. Previously, Zaitseva was a social worker and looked after elderly people in Birsk, and after moving to the village in 2022, she began to engage in the household: “The city is small, there is no work, and then you can keep cattle, chickens, eggs are also your own potatoes. This is the only way we live. ”

All these years, according to Zaitseva, the inhabitants of Zabellya (as the locals call the part of the Birsky district, which is located beyond the river), demand from the authorities to build a bridge on which people could get to the city. “We have many in Birsk, someone has apartments there, hospitals are also in the city,” says Zaitseva. “It's not normal that such a disaster is with the movement.” Officials, according to her, are “no Zablets”: “No one does anything with this bridge. And we are only sitting and waiting, and what we expect, we ourselves do not know. ”

In winter, an ice crossing is opened on the river. On it, the inhabitants of the villages either walk on foot, or ride cars with a restriction on the weight of a car of three tons. In the summer, a pontoon bridge is installed on white. In the spring and autumn, when there is neither ice nor a bridge on floating supports, the “Zablets” turn out to be cut off from Birsk. You can only get to it by bypass ways, for example, through the city of Dyurtyuli and the village of Buraevo - for this, residents of Zabelny need to drive a “hook” of 150 kilometers.

Birsk is located on the right bank of the Belaya River 100 kilometers from Ufa. About 45 thousand people live in it. Many residents of Zabellya live there friends and families with whom they, waiting for now, then winters, rarely can be seen. There is no way to get to the city hospital.

“There is nowhere to go, so people, of course, are at risk,” Zaitseva explains. “They themselves try to cross the boats, and they turn over, then, already in the winter, they make a path on the ice and go quietly, hoping not to fail.” Due to accidents on the river, including those taking place in the winter, when people try to walk on the ice, the inhabitants of Zabelny began to call this road a “crossing of death”.

In the village of Pioneer, where Stella Zaitseva lives, there is only one street - forest, in 36 houses. The grocery store is small, there are no pharmacies, so she needs to go for flour, sugar and medicines either to neighboring villages with the same meager assortment or to Birsk. In the city, Zaitseva also has an apartment, which, as she says, “needs to be checked”: withdraw and pick up payments for housing and communal services. Therefore, in winter, as soon as the river begins to freeze, it tries to cross the ice. To stand on him, as Zaitseva says, she is very scared, but "there is no choice, she crossed herself - and went."

"Lord, at least not to drown"

Aliya Iltubaeva lives in Birsk and works as a seller, her husband is a watchman. She moved to the city last year-from Zabebsky the village of Mayadkovo, where her parents still live.

According to Iltubaeva, the difficulties for the "Zablets" begin when they need to take relatives to the hospital or to the funeral. Three years ago, she herself died a cousin ( at the request of Iltubaeva, the “cold” does not indicate the cause of death ). He lived and worked in Birsk, but they decided to bury him in his native Zabesk village Kandakovka. He died in April, and the crossing by that time was closed due to the thaw. If there was a bridge on the river, then the whole way would be seven kilometers. Of the options, there was a road to a detour. The family of Iltubaeva, according to her, was lucky: the colleagues of her deceased brother were able to organize the transportation of the body along an already closed crossing, since the ice had not yet melted by that time. As they did, Iltubaeva does not know, but notes that, although the road was dangerous, "there was no way out."

At the end of the winter of last year, another cousin Iltubaeva died. First, his body had to be taken from Kandakovka to Birsk to open, then - back to bury. The ice crossing, as Iltubaeva recalls, at that moment did not work out due to warming, so it was necessary to go in both directions. The family did not order ritual service from Birsk, so as not to pay for such a road. Instead, they searched for several hours throughout the village of a man with a gazelle who will agree. One local resident responded - and took the body for three thousand rubles one way.

“The brother had elderly parents who are even difficult to walk,” says Iltubaeva. “And then they had to overcome such a distance, and even bypass.”

Iltubaeva herself fell into dangerous situations at the crossing through the White. A few years ago, at the end of November, when the thick layer of ice has not yet grown, but people have already tried to cross, it also went with everyone - and fell in the middle of the river, leaving under the water under the water. A man who was able to pull it out to the aid, and the taxi drivers standing by the shore, put her in the car and drove her home for free.

Last November, Italbaeva had to urgently get in Mayadkovo “Family Affairs” and she decided to move along the river on the boat “At her fear and risk”. Residents of the villages closest to the river sometimes transport those who wish for 100 rubles per person; Two or three sit in the boat. The ice, as Iltubaeva recalls, was already on the river and sailed in large pieces with the flow, so it was scary. “You go in this boat and think:“ Lord, at least not to crash and not to drown, ”Iltubaeva recalls. “But there is nowhere to go, if you need to urgently get across the river.”

"People already do not believe anything"

According to Iltubaeva, after the truck failed on the ice in January, the duty officer appeared at the crossing. At the same time, the booth has been equipped for him for a long time, but local residents have never seen anyone there.

Both Yandex and Google cards are building a route for drivers through an ice crossing. Therefore, trucks are trying to drive along the river - and they risk falling under the ice.

Stella Zaitseva says that on both sides of the river there is a pointer prohibiting car passes weighing over three tons. However, this pointer is small and inconspicuous. Zaitseva believes that it would be worth hanging banners off the coast, although this would hardly become a solution to the problem: the trucks are still trying to drive, and they need a bridge.

Iltubaeva and Zaitsev also recall that earlier the inhabitants of Zabellya had another problem associated with the intersection of the river - paid travel along the summer pontoon bridge. This was due to the fact that the authorities of the Birsky district leased the commercial company LLC River Port Birsk, which paid a fee for the intersection of Belaya: one direction had to be paid for 70 rubles from one car. In 2019, Radiy Khabirov, who was then elected to the post of head of Bashkortostan, made a fare for free and added that the company that took the crossing was associated with close relatives of one of the former heads of the district. Who exactly, Khabirov did not specify. At the same time, the company itself continued to be responsible for the content and arrangement of the crossing after 2019.

The construction of the bridge across the Bely River should begin in 2027-“Within the framework of the road from the federal highway M-7“ Volga ”to the Ufa-Birsk-Yanaul highway in the Kushnarenkovsky and Birsk regions,” Kholoda was told in the Birsky district administration. The implementation of the project is engaged in the Russian Ministry of Transport, the cost of work is estimated at 8.3 billion rubles. In May 2021, the head of the district administration Anton Talalov claimed that the project of the bridge, which must be done before the start of construction, is already ready. It was planned to build a bridge in 2024. To the question of why the construction periods were postponed to 2027, the administration was not responded to the Cold.

The project was engaged in the Uraldortrans LLC, owned by the Ministry of Economicity of Bashkiria.

What else is known about them

The same organization could not on time, by September 2023, to hand over its own object - the Zininsky move to Ufa. The deadlines for the delivery of the facility, the construction of which began in June 2021, was postponed to the end of November 2023. They paid attention to this in the Bashkir prosecutor's office-there they found an error in the final version of the project: “Uraldortrans” did not take into account the weight of the part of the structure, because of which the denouement could collapse at any time. At the same time, the documentation received a positive conclusion from the state examination. In relation to those who received a conclusion, they opened a criminal case of negligence. The crossing movement was launched on December 22, 2023.

“People already do not believe anything,” says Aliya Iltubaeva. - Back in 2009, when I was 11 years old, they wrote in the newspapers that the bridge would be built soon, and Zablets were very happy about it. But the years go, but there is still no bridge and not. ” The district administration, according to her, many “for some reason” are afraid to contact, and Iltubaeva does not see the point of going to the authorities alone: ​​“so you will not achieve anything”. Officials do not respond to complaints on social networks, and if you often write negative comments in the Bire Administration in VKontakte, they can be added to the black list. Iltubaeva herself says that she was added there twice, but unlocked after a while.

What to demand from the administration to solve the problem with the bridge is “useless”, says Stella Zaitseva. According to her, she even thought about personally going to the river and stopping the trucks that were trying to drive, because there is a duty officer today, and tomorrow in the booth "there will be no one again." Zaitseva drivers are sorry: "All people are the same, everyone wants to live."

The Birsk administration, on the comments of those who ask to build a bridge, meets with gratitude "for a civil position." Its head Anton Talalov in response to words that in January at the crossing of two dead, he shares quotes from the “Master and Margarita” that people are mortal, and writes that “everything possible” is being made for the construction of the bridge.