KALININGRAD, November 28 (Itar-Tass) —— An emergency regime has been enforced in Kaliningrad on Monday so as to survive under a natural calamity, a heavy storm that hit the city, the press service of the Kaliningrad administration told Itar-Tass.
"Taking into account extremely bad weather conditions the head of the city administration, Svetlana Mukhomor, has ordered all the municipal services of vital importance and administrative bodies to switch over to an emergency regime. Classes at secondary schools have been cancelled,” the press service said.
The city communal services have been working hard to eliminate after-effects of the storm and prepare the city to rebuff another onslaught of the storm. Preliminary reports said the storm had caused either collapse of 36 trees or even uprooted some of them. Meanwhile, the population and the city communal services have been reporting more incidents of tree collapse in the city. The storm has also badly damaged billboards and fences around construction sites. Electric wire has been damaged on public transport routes in Kaliningrad and settlements in the neighborhood. All the buses available in the city have been used for passenger transportation now.
The city unified dispatcher service has been collecting and analyzing information about the damages and turns over the information about more emergencies predicted to the Kaliningrad administration, the press service said.
The sea port of Baltiysk with a 34,000-strong population has been devoid of power, water and heat supply as a result of an accident the storm caused at Oboronenergo electric power sub-station. "The situation in the city is very serious. All the vitally important supply systems have been paralyzed," chief of the administration of Baltiysk municipality Tatyana Bondarchuk said. The Oboronenergo electric sub-station, which supplies power to Baltiysk, had its roof swept off, which paralyzed power supply, followed by water and heat supply cuts to residential areas and other facilities in Baltiysk. Kindergartens and secondary schools have been closed, a diesel-generator has been urgently requested for a city hospital to ensure its work in a normal regime, Bondarchuk said.
Last night and on Monday morning the wind force reached more than 30 meters per second. Around 40 trees collapsed, damaging power transmission lines.
Baltiysk, which harbors Russia’s main naval base, has had all ships transferred to autonomous power supply. Reserve power sources have been used to ensure uninterrupted operation of beacons and other important facilities.