Heating returns to border town
After 12 days without proper heating, regional authorities lift the state of emergency in Alakurtti.
During his visit to Murmansk Oblast this weekend, Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov confirmed that the local boiler is being repaired and given additional capacities, the Murmansk regional administration informs. A big number of people in Alakurtti are employed in the Army and in the Border Guard Service.
As previously reported, almost thousand people were evaculated from their homes in Alakurtti when the local boiler broke down during extremely cold on 5 February.
The state of emergency was lifted only on 17 February, 12 days after the boiler collapse.
Most of the evacuees have now returned to their homes. However, a number of people can still not leave the evacuation center because of needed repair work. Murman.ru reports.
Local authorities confirm that the Finnish Red Cross planned a humanitarian support operation to Alakurtti. However, the aid could not be transported across the nearby border because an official request from Finnish authorities had not been handed over to the Russian side, town mayor Aleksei Vladimirov told newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.
Alakurtti was not the only place which lost its heating in Murmansk Oblast on the 5 February. In the city of Kandalaksha, south in the region, about 20 thousand people lost heating for more than 12 hours that same day, KP.ru reports
The town of Alakurtti has about 6500 inhabitants. It was Finnish land until after the 1939 Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland.
