SEPT. 4 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan has sent 520 soldiers to help try and put out forest fires around the city of Gabala, media reported. The emergencies ministry has said that high winds and unseasonably hot temperatures had whipped up the fires. Fire teams across Georgia and Armenia have also been dealing with forest fires this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 342, published on Sept. 7 2017)
ALMATY, AUG. 31 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — — A methane gas leak triggered an explosion at a mine in central Kazakhstan, killing three coal miners in the worst Kazakh mining accident since 2008 when 30 people died in a blast.
The Kazakhstanstkaya mine is located near the city of Karaganda and is reportedly owned by the steel works at nearby Timirtau. The steel factory is owned by Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal.
The reputation of ArcelorMittal’s factory has fallen over the last few years as it cut jobs. This was partly linked to a global economic downturn and partly a result of international sanctions on Iran, a core client.
The factory now employs around 12,000 workers, down from 15,000 only a few years ago. It had also tried to cut staff salaries, although this effort was rebuked.
Kazakhstan has a patchy record for coal mining safety. As well as the 2008 accident, a monorail accident last year also killed three miners at another coal mine owned by ArcelorMittal. In 2006, 41 miners in Kazakhstan died in a methane blast.
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(News report from Issue No. 342, published on Sept. 7 2017)
AUG. 29 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — An explosion at a chemical manufacturing plant in Nairit, Armenia, ignited a fire that raged for at least two days. The chemicals plant has been on the verge of bankruptcy for several years, with management sacking two-thirds of the staff en mass in 2015. The plant is currently owned by Samvel Karapetyan, one of Armenia’s richest men, through his company Electric Networks of Armenia. It is unclear if anybody was hurt in the explosion and what caused it.
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(News report from Issue No. 342, published on Sept. 7 2017)
AUG. 27 (The Conway Bulletin) — At least six people were injured when a weapons depot at a military base around 70km north of Baku exploded, hospital sources in Azerbaijan told media (Aug. 27).
In 2016, a blast at an arms factory near Baku killed at least two people and injured 22 more.
Eyewitness reports described a series of massive explosions at the base. Emergency services closed off nearby roads and evacuated two villages.
Azerbaijan’s defence ministry declined to comment on reports that a number of people had been injured.
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(News report from Issue No. 341, published on Aug. 27 2017)
AUG. 15 2017 (The Bulletin) — A fire destroyed up to 2,750 hectares of ancient forest in Armenia, Russian news agencies quoted ecologists as saying. Firefighters and military water-carrying planes took four days to control the fire that spread quickly because of the unusually dry conditions. Much of the Khosrov forest, reportedly planted in the 4th century, is made up of oak trees.
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Copyright ©Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 340, published on Aug. 20 2017)
JULY 3 2017 (The Bulletin) — A fire burnt down most of the biggest bazaar in Dushanbe, destroying hundreds of people’s livelihoods. Police have not yet determined how the fire at the Korvon bazaar started but arson has not been ruled out. The state news agency reported that President Emomali Rakhmon ordered his officials to exempt traders from rent and other taxes.
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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)
BISHKEK, APRIL 29 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A landslide in south Kyrgyzstan buried a village, killing 24 people, including nine children.
The landslide has forced the government to explain why more people hadn’t been evacuated from the area around Osh, known to be vulnerable to landslides, after heavy rain.
Landslides are common in Kyrgyzstan, a poor and mountainous country where many people eke out a living from rearing cattle in remote areas.
Pictures from the landslide show a whole section of green hill had given way and crashed into the village of Ayu below.
The Kyrgyz ministry of emergencies, which has previously been criticised for being under-funded and ineffective, said that it had earlier issued warnings to everybody in the village to leave.
Elmira Sheripova, a spokeswoman for the ministry said that a dozen families chose to stay. She explained that families across Kyrgyzstan often refuse to relocate despite warnings from the authorities.
“Families refuse to leave dangerous zones for two reasons,” she said. “First, people say that they have been living in their houses for more than 20 years. Even their parents lived there for many years and nothing dangerous has ever happened. Second, people were not satisfied with the land provided from local governments.”
Nearly 18,000 families in Kyrgyzstan are considered to be living in dangerous area.
Ms Sheripova said that over 11,000 have been resettled from dangerous areas, 4,000 are on a list waiting for land to be allocated to them by local authorities but more than 3,000 have refused to relocate.
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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)
MAY 4 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s emergencies ministry is short-staffed and under-funded, deputy Kalys Ahmatov told parliament. The emergencies ministry is a legacy of the Soviet era and is deployed to deal with the aftermath of everything from earthquakes and avalanches to plane crashes. Specifically, Mr Ahmatov said that the ministry needed another 240 employees and 30% more equipment.
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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)
APRIL 17 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Heavy rainfall triggered floods in north and central Kazakhstan, forcing thousands of people to flee their homes. Media reports said that 5,000 people have been evacuated to high ground. The worst hit area was around the town of Atbasar, 260km north of Astana.
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(News report from Issue No. 325, published on April 17 2017)
APRIL 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — This week’s ‘March of the Penguins’ should be saluted. Nineteen penguins have been flown from Bristol in southwest England
Nineteen penguins have been flown from Bristol in southwest England to Tbilisi where they are being rehomed in order to build a new penguin population. A flood destroyed the zoo in 2015, killing half its animals including the penguins.
Other zoos around Europe have also been donating animals, Riga sent a tiger, bringing the Tbilisi Zoo’s animal population back up to strength.
It has been a regeneration programme that perhaps even Noah, with his ark, would be proud of. Less than two years ago, images flashed around the world of tigers drowned in mud, bears being shot by the security services and a hippo standing knee-deep in water in a central Tbilisi street.
Now the hippo called Begi, the focus of an elaborate rescue operation in 2015, is back in the zoo and visitors are able to see for themselves one of the world’s most famous animals.
The flash flood on June 14 2015 killed half the zoo’s animals. Tigers and exotic birds were drown in their cages; the security forces tracked and shot dead dozens of escaped animals. In total 300 animals died. The flood also killed 20 people, including one by an escaped tiger four days after the flood.
Tbilisi Zoo’s existence hasn’t been easy. Opened in 1927, at its peak in the 1970s the zoo housed 1,000 different species. In the 1990s, though, funds for the zoo dried up and visitor numbers collapsed. This was the difficult and impoverished post-Soviet era when the newly independent countries were more bankrupt than solvent. A report by the World Society for the Protection of Animals in 1993 said that half the animals had died of starvation of the cold in the previous two years.
Now, though, Tbilisi zoo has been patched together and plans to relocate out of the city are being considered once again. Its future looks brighter than ever.
This is the zoo which has survived starvation after the break up of the Soviet Union and risen from the mud and horror of the 2015 flash flood.
By James Kilner, The Editor, The Conway Bulletin
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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)
