Sent in three letters: locals celebrate the 50th anniversary of BAM in the cold, without hot water and hope

“They tell us, restore the potbelly stoves” – the village of Kichera freezes on the BAM. In residential buildings + 9-11, on the street up to – 40.

In 2024, BAM will celebrate its 50th anniversary. Once upon a time, courageous Komsomol members and dreamy Komsomol women rushed to build the Baikal-Amur Railway, which was very important and necessary for the country. They woke up in the morning in construction trailers, tearing frozen hair from the frozen walls. And it was so romantic. Because there was a whole life ahead.

Half a century later, they, now grandparents, are celebrating the New Year 2024 in emergency mode, without hot water, in cold weather and felt boots. It was as if we were back in our youth. But there’s nothing romantic about it anymore.

You also have to pay for cold batteries – about 8-10 thousand rubles per month. From a pension of 15 thousand rubles. In winter and summer. “They divide the total amount by 12 months; this year, for example, many people got about 9 thousand a month, including in the summer. This is in addition to the rest of the utilities, just for heating alone. They say it’s better to pay in installments, otherwise you won’t pay,” say local residents.

For the first time, residents of a village in the North-Baikal region of Buryatia called the editorial office at the end of last February. Right in the morning. We have a five-hour time difference, but the matter did not require delay. They said they didn’t know what to do. It’s more than forty degrees outside, and about 10 degrees in the apartments.

“10.8 ​​degrees without electric heaters. And if with them, then 15-20. Some houses have three heaters running. But then electricity bills alone increase by 3-4 thousand per month. We wear hats and felt boots, children sleep in jackets,” complained the frozen Bamovites. They said that they were being offered a way out of the situation – to buy potbelly stoves, like in the Civil War, but they somehow doubted it.

Then the thaw came very quickly, and no help was needed.

A year has passed. Nothing changed. Winter and frost have arrived again. After all, the main thing for us is stability.

“Is BAM still being built?” – I asked the residents in surprise now that they called again.

“Of course, they are pulling a new branch, they are going to celebrate the anniversary. It will be in the summer,” they answered me proudly.

Summer is good. It’s warm in the summer.

In the summer, people in the village complain not about heating, but about cows. That they walk without a leash wherever they have to, including on the playground. Unattended cows are not as dangerous to health as the cold in apartments. But it’s still unpleasant. “We have the same problems every year, year after year. Heating in winter… Cows in summer. In autumn and spring – off-road. Then he breaks the pipes. And so in a circle. Nothing changes,” people sigh.

They send me a photo of the central boiler room. As you can see in the picture, there really is only a handful of coal left in the village, but what then?

“We wrote a complaint to the very top in Moscow and sent it by email, on November 29 we were told that everything was in order. And that the temperature regime in the village was not violated. There is enough coal in the boiler room. We need to find out why our temperature is low from the person in charge of the house, and not from the Kremlin.”

And literally a day later, on December 1, the “emergency prevention” mode was suddenly introduced in the territory and, in addition, the hot water was turned off, which had not been available before that.

They issued an order that fully confirmed the residents’ complaint: “Due to the low fuel supply, lack of fuel on the way and for shipment, as well as in order to prevent damage to the main equipment and heat and water supply networks. In order to save fuel, introduce a complete restriction on the supply of hot water.”

People think that local officials somehow intercepted their complaint and did not let it go up. Because how in Moscow, for example, do they know that everything is fine with their coal if there was no commission from Moscow here? “It’s probably just an unsubscribe,” they worry.

“It’s cold in residential buildings, it’s cold in stores, it’s cold at the post office, it’s also cold at school, only in the kindergarten, thank God, it’s warm. But only there,” people list.

About a thousand people live in their village. Almost everyone works on the railway – the famous Bama dynasties. They arrived fifty years ago and have remained ever since.

Grandparents remain, but young people still try to leave these pristine places. Which look in the photographs as if from a New Year’s fairy tale.

But food is brought to the village from afar – from Severobaikalsk, and everything is exorbitantly expensive. The roads, according to locals, are sometimes poorly cleaned too. “Our women have nowhere to give birth – there is no maternity hospital: either in Severobaikalsk, or fly by plane to Ulan-Ude, which is an hour and a half flight from here,” our interlocutors explain.

Residents of the village of Kichera love their small homeland very much and want them to have a good life here. It’s just a shame that it turns out the way it always does.

“Our nature is very beautiful, mosquito-like romance. But cultural and socially useful work is also being carried out. There is a cultural center where artists come to give concerts. We live very friendly. Now, for example, everyone is weaving camouflage nets and making trench candles from cinders for our heroes in the Northern Military District,” say locals.

They really don’t know where to complain next and how to make their problems heard so that they can be heard. And they ask very much not to give their names, otherwise you never know… Although where to exile – further than BAM?

They still don’t know the exact reason for the lack of heating. Either in the general chat the administration writes that another breakdown has occurred, then, according to rumors, the heat circulation is disrupted, and nothing depends on the amount of coal, then they explain that it is an evil wind that is blowing out the heat, that over half a century of operation all communications have become unusable – everything has its end, nothing can be done. The system needs to be changed. Only the patience of our citizens seems to be endless.