TVER, December 2 (Itar-Tass) —— Russian Minister of Emergency Situations Vladimir Puchkov has made a flight by helicopter Sunday over the Tver Region, which was hit by a heavy snowfall, “for the personal control and taking efficient decisions in a current tense situation,” chief press officer of the emergency situation department in the Tver Region Denis Gutsalyuk told Itar-Tass.
The minister visited a warm-up station in the settlement Zavolzhsky outside Tver. Puchkov had a working meeting with representatives of the interdepartmental emergency headquarters. The details of the meeting were not reported.
The traffic jams have stretched for many kilometers and the trucks turned out to be blocked on the highway Rossiya in the Tver Region last Friday. The traffic of trucks is still stricken over the need to provide the free access to the snowploughs. The hot meals are offered on the highway, the stations are deployed to warm up the drivers and provide medical services for them, the fuel supplies are delivered timely.
The traffic was restored in the direction of Moscow at 19:00 Moscow time on Sunday. “As long as 35 kilometres of highway have been treated with the special mixture of sand and salt from the frontier of the Tver Region in the direction of St. Petersburg. The traffic is free from the 180th kilometre of the highway, the average permitted speed is up to 30-40 kilometres per hour,” Gutsalyuk said. “The traffic jams of the heavy-duty trucks in the direction of St. Petersburg have formed at the sections between the 131st and 152nd kilometres and at the 180th kilometre of the highway M-10. The traffic jam is getting shorter at a speed of 6-7 kilometres per hour,” he said.
“The heavy-duty trucks, which have piled on the border between the Tver and Veliky Novgorod Regions, started moving at 08:30 Moscow time on Sunday,” he said.
The round-the-clock hotline was opened in the main emergency situation department in the Tver Region.
The highway M-10 is one of the most loaded and problematic highways for the traffic. Since 2008 the emergency helicopters are making regular patrolling flights along the federal highway.