Alexander Dybin
On the anniversary of the emergency, journalists reached out to Dzhabyk and the neighboring village of Zapasnoye, located in the south of the Chelyabinsk region, to whom local residents told how they live a year after last year's devastating natural disaster. According to the residents of Dzhabyk, the houses built in three months after the fire do not please everyone. The main complaint is water. Wells were drilled in every yard, but in a hurry they did it thoughtlessly, shallowly and next to cesspools. You can’t just drink water from a well, you have to additionally process it. At someone in houses the tile has departed, at someone something has fallen off.
Natalya Kolkataeva , a volunteer of the Mnogodetstvo organization, told Novye Izvestiya that the activists helped one family that did not receive free housing or monetary compensation.
“The house of an elderly couple was badly damaged,” said Natalya Kolkataeva , “while it turned out that they were not entitled to compensation, since they did not have the same status of the land under the site. They themselves did not know that their documents were not in order. It was a service dwelling that they bought out. Their roof and porch burned down. All they were entitled to was a payment of 50 thousand rubles. They bought a refrigerator for it and didn’t have enough for anything else. We collected funds for them for repairs and humanitarian aid. As for the new settlers, the main claim is water. There is dissatisfaction with the quality of buildings. With whom we talked, at least a third of the residents definitely have questions for the builders. But given the construction time, this is understandable. Hurry before the cold."
At the same time, many residents are in no hurry to demand repairs, guided by the principle of "don't look a gift horse in the mouth."
The head of the Kartalinsky district, to which the villages belong, Anatoly Vdovin , in an interview with a Novye Izvestia correspondent, noted that there really are questions about water, but about finishing - it all depends on the owner.
“Excellent houses,” Vdovin said, “yes, there are flaws in some places, but any house shrinks, falls under temperature differences, violations are inevitable. Owners need to understand that this is their home and needs to be looked after. Each owner has a contact of the contractor who built it, they come and repair on call. But if a screw falls off or a tile falls off, do you have to sit and wait? Or is it easier to take a solution and stick it? Every year something breaks in my house, and I fix it myself.”
But the head promised to deal with the water.
“The main issue about water is that it is not of high quality,” said Anatoly Vdovin , “we agreed with the contractor who works there, we’ll go through everything again and see, somewhere there is an opening, somewhere we’ll deepen, but there are no serious problems there.”
Recall that the tragedy occurred in July 2021. After a long drought and dry thunderstorms in the south of the Chelyabinsk region, a large-scale forest fire broke out, which approached the settlements. Residents were evacuated from the villages of Dzhabyk and Zapasnoye, but they failed to defend their houses. 72 houses burned down. One of them killed an elderly man. Residents were offered to receive a million rubles or rebuild their houses. Some decided to move out of the village, some - to get new housing. 25 houses were built on an emergency basis in three months.
Another story related to this fire is the construction of a road to the village of Dzhabyk. A broken primer led to it, along which local residents were evacuated with difficulty. In 2021, the president flew to the region to inspect the affected areas, who was asked to help with the repair of the road. About half a billion rubles were allocated for the 20-kilometer section of the route. The construction of the road began in the fall of 2021, and some of the work was already underway in the cold. But they didn't manage to finish it. As a result, the contract for the repair of the track is still being executed. According to local residents, although the road was covered with asphalt, the surface is not even, as another layer needs to be laid. Work is expected to be completed this summer.