More than ten thousand Sochi residents spent 24 hours without electricity

On the eve of the Day of Spring and Labour marked on May 1, residents of different areas of the resort city of Sochi, KrasnodarTerritory, were left without electricity, which in most homes was restored only on the following day.

The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent reports that, in particular, about three thousand inhabitants of the micro-district "Gagarinskiy" had a power outage from 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Moscow time. According to residents, at first, they were promised to resume the power only by the next morning. "However, we – together with tenants of ten de-energized houses in Tchaikovsky andNovosyolov Streets and Tsvetnoy Boulevard– decided not to wait till morning and blocked the highway," saidElvira Shiryaeva,a resident of Tchaikovsky Street.

"We believe that power disconnection on holidays is a mockery at the rights of Sochi residents," said Elvira's neighbour Alina Novikova. "However, before taking resolute actions, at 9:30 p.m. Moscow time we called to the telephone hotline of the city Mayor and asked the person on duty to tell the Mayor Anatoly Pakhomovthat if within half hourelectricity was not supplied to our houses, we would go out and block the only traffic route in Gagarin Street."

"I don't know whether it had effect; however, the power was resumed at 10:00 p.m.," the locals said. "And only for this reason the tenants decided not to continue."

As reported by Olga Semyonova, a resident of the micro-district Bocharov Ruchei, the "Kubanenergo" told her that they did not know when the emergency team would come to them to solve the problem: "We have only one team, but cable beaks and other substation failures are in dozens; the repairmen can't cope."

The call desk of the Open Joint-Stock Company (OJSC) "Kubanenergo" refused to comment on frequent power outages in Sochi.

An informal source from the "Kubanenergo" told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that the power grids in Sochi are worn out by almost one hundred percent; however, authorizations are granted all the time for digging and connecting new buildings and skyscrapers to electric grid. According to the source, the Sochi power networks were not designed for such high loads; therefore, failures are inevitable.

Meanwhile, Soslan Kisiev,Deputy Director of Sochi Electricity Grids, believes that the main problem is in the builders of Olympic facilities, which are constantly breaking the worn out networks in residential micro-districts.