“The forest crumbled like a house of cards”: a hurricane killed the guests of the Oka camp site

Now law enforcement officers are working at the camp site in the Tarusa region, where the forest has so ruthlessly cracked down on tourists, and a criminal case has already been initiated. And yesterday, until the fateful midnight, fun reigned there – the Kaluga motorcycle club celebrated its 27th anniversary.

“We started walking on Thursday, the 17th, it’s customary for us,” says Nastya from Kaluga, a frequenter of parties of a motorcycle club known to everyone in her city. – A lot of all sorts of things: contests, draws, concerts; they chose the king of the bar, mixed a 200-liter cocktail, raffled off a motorcycle … Motofest, in short.

– Only for bikers?

No, but through them. They could invite their guests.

— And what did a seven-year-old girl do at the motofest?

— There are always a lot of children at motofests. Ours and with babies come. But we do not know the deceased, this is the daughter of one of the guests. We are always at this camp site, nothing like this has ever happened.

— But if this is a camp site, why did people sleep in tents?

– Not all, some in houses, for example, me. Just houses – from 1200 to 3000 rubles. for a place, depends on the degree of its comfort. I took the simplest, and then only because I am with a stroller and breastfeed. And so I would also go to the tent. The hostel allowed them to be placed on its territory for free during the motofest.

– And there were no recommendations where you can put, and where not? Any guidance based on the weather forecast?

– Nope. Or I didn’t hear, I’m without a tent. I remember only a warning that it is strictly forbidden to bring any kind of weapons and mind-altering substances into the territory. When I came out, I was really surprised. I went into the house in the evening – the forest stood like a wall. And I go out – crumbled like a house of cards.

But a tourist named Anton spent the night in a tent and went in search of victims after the first blow of the elements, which literally turned fun into mourning in a minute.

— Around midnight, a thunderstorm began, rain. Very heavy rain, lightning one after another, thunder with very powerful peals … I was in the tent when I heard two strong blows in a row, and each of them seemed to me as if double. Then another loud sound, as if the alarm went off. I get out and see that literally 10 meters away on the hood of the car there is a tree, a trunk, and a crown with branches – on tents. I immediately checked there, but there was no one in those tents. But a little further I saw a second fallen tree, and under it a man. Crushed to death.

— Did you understand it yourself?

– No, they called the doctors, they pronounced him dead. And as soon as the doctors left, a couple of minutes later a man flew out of the windbreak with a bloodied girl in his arms.

I ran for the doctors, then with a joint effort they carried her to the entrance, and from there the ambulance took her away. It is a pity for her, we so hoped that we could save … One of the guests brought his daughter to play before the school. When the child was taken away, then we walked around the camp in search of the victims. One more man was overwhelmed, but he got out on his own, no help was required – neither ours nor the doctors. But there were a lot of fallen trees, a whole bunch, either uprooted or broken, as if lightning had struck.

– And the doctors were able to quickly get through the windbreak?

— Yes, they passed without problems, there were even extra carriages.

Have you been to this base before?

– The second time, like at the birthday party of the motorcycle club. This time there were a lot of people, both on the territory of the base and behind it. Many people often come here as “savages”, whole families. But this time there was a celebration of the birthday of the Kaluga motorcycle club, and the audience was appropriate – motorcyclists and people close to this topic. Someone in the houses, someone in the tents, not enough for all the houses.

– But you personally were not interested in the weather forecast, you are with a tent, and not in a house?

– As for the forecast, I will say this: people have been there since Thursday. And the connection in those places is very poor, it is almost impossible to use the Internet. Only in the morning there was a message from the Ministry of Emergency Situations, and that’s all. But after that, I personally walked around the territory, the peasants and I walked for firewood and saw that the trees were not rotten, healthy. It just all happened so sadly. In such a situation, it is difficult to predict.

Here is the message that reached the participants of the motofest on a cloudless Saturday morning, many will now keep in their memory both theirs and their phones as a deadly lesson from the elements: intermittent rain, thunderstorm, during thunderstorm wind gusts of 15 m/s. And when the promised rain did not come in the next 3 hours, the warning was completely forgotten. And they remembered only when the forest turned into a killer.