The reason of the landslide in Dnipropetrovsk was soil watering

On November 2, a huge landslide took place in Dnipropet­rovsk on the slope of Rybal­ska Ravine, where the Voitsekho­vych street is located on its bottom. Hundreds tons of clay, mud, fragments of buildings and dozens of fallen trees completely buried twelve garages. The calamity to varying degrees has totally destroyed or damaged 27 garages in the cooperative Svitlofor-1. In the neigh­boring cooperative Yastrub, the land­slide has overthrown the gate. Fortunately, the incident occurred at half past six in the morning, so it appears that no one got under the wreckage. At least, the guards say so. Already in half an hour, the landslide area was surrounded by the police, and the Ministry of Emergencies rescuers started scraping the rubble asunder. The situation turned out to be more serious, as the landslip has damaged communications. The Dniprohaz workers, who arrived at the accident place, have blocked the gas pipe, and power engineers have temporarily cut off the electricity. In addition, the residents of nearby houses were left without heating. The owners of damaged garages say that they saw a leaking pipe on the ravine’s slope the day before. The version about soil watering was offered by the Dnipropetrovsk mayor Ivan Kulichenko, who arrived at the disaster area. “Definitely, the reason of the landslide was soil watering,” he said to the mass media representatives. “But why and how such a mass of soil was damped – it is still unknown. It will take some time for the specialists to find out.” Kulichenko promised that the city government will help people renew the destroyed garages, but there will be no material compensation for the damaged vehicles. “This is private property,” said the mayor, “So vehicle owners can only count on the insurance.”

In the meantime, the opposition in the Dnipropetrovsk City Council addressed sharp criticism at the city government. The head of Ukraine of the Future faction Serhii Zhukov said that authorities had been warned about the danger of landslides in Rybalska Ravine about a year ago. “Since October 2010,” he said, “We’ve been writing letters and requests to all bodies of executive power. I personally wrote the mayor four appeals about landslides in the Kirov Prospect area. I received standard formal answers about the documentation being in progress and the money being allocated for works to prevent landslides in Rybalska Ravine – nearly 2 million hryvnias. However, no concrete work has been done.” In Zhukov’s opinion, in this situation, the mayor should have vo-­luntarily resigned from authority. “In a civilized world, such a mayor would have retired a long time ago. One cannot take the same post for the third time in a row and only build fountains,” resents the deputy.