KRASNODAR, January 30 (Itar-Tass) — A total of 18,000 people living in the areas around Russia’s Black Sea coast between the seaside resort town of Anapa and the port city of Novorossiysk have been affected by an electricity outage that occurred in the wake of a heavy snowstorm, a spokesman for the Kubanenergo power utility told Itar-Tass.
“Partial outages occurred in the stanitsas/type of township in southern Russia – Itar-Tass/ Blagoveshchenskaya and Rayevskaya, the townships of Buzhor, Suvorovo-Cherkessky, and the village of Gai-Kodzor,” he said.
“The situation is especially complicated in Suvorovo-Cherkessky where a substation burned down,” the spokesman said.
Kubanenergo has dispatched 18 teams of repair workers to the area of the outage.
In the meantime, a source at the Bazel Aero company, which operates Anapa’s airport, told Itar-Tass that the thickness of snow cover on the airport’s runways has reached 35 centimeters.
“Jets can’t land or take off in a situation of this kind,” the source said adding that the airport will be closed through to 14:00 hours Moscow Standard Time as a minimum.
The airport’s management has brought all the snowplowing machines into the operation to clear the runway, but low visibility of less than 300 meters was making the snowplows move very slowly.
According to territorial forecasts the weather conditions will improve a little in the afternoon.
The situation is the same in another Black Sea coast resort city, Gelendzhik. “The airport there is closed because of a heavy unending snowfall,” a Bazel Aero executive said.
Gelendzhik will unlikely open for flights before 15:00 hours Moscow Standard Time.