Tag Archives: emergency

Weapons depot at military base in Azerbaijan explodes

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.

ENDS

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(News report from Issue No. 341, published on Aug. 27 2017)

Fire damages forest in Armenia

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.

ENDS

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(News report from Issue No. 340, published on Aug. 20 2017)

 

Fire burns market in Tajikistan

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)

 

Landslide kills 24 people in south Kyrgyzstan after heavy rainfall

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.

ENDS

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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)

 

Emergencies ministry is underpowered, says Kyrgyz minister

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)

Floods hit the north Kazakhstan

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)

 

Comment: After the flood: Restoring Tbilisi’s zoo, writes Kilner

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)

Small fire damages Tajik parliament

MARCH 18 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A small fire damaged the Tajik parliament building, media reported quoting interior ministry officials. They said that a computer overheating was to blame for the fire a parliamentary reception area. Photos from parliament showed two windows with black scorch marks. Nobody was injured in the fire.

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(News report from Issue No. 322, published on March 27 2017)

Azerbaijan finds corpse in Caspian

MARCH 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Another male corpse was found in the Caspian Sea, possibly one of the missing men from an oil platform that collapsed into the Azerbaijani sector of the sea that killed 9 people in December. Bodies of the dead men have been washing up across the Caspian Sea coastline. The year before, at least 30 people had died when a storm caused a fire at a Caspian Sea oil rig.

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(News report from Issue No. 321, published on March 20 2017)

Blast at Uzbek chemical factory kills five

FEB. 24 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) —  A blast at a chemical plant in Ferghana, east Uzbekistan, on Feb. 23 killed several people, the Uzbek government said.

It declined to give any more details about the blast, other than to report that an investigation had been set up, but the Sputnik news agency quoted a source at the fertiliser factory as saying that at least five people had been killed and that several more had been injured.

“A total of five people have been killed at the site of the explosion, all of them were part of a repair team. Several others are now in a hospital,” the source told Sputnik, a Russian news agency.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said that the blast occurred at the ammonia production facility of the Farg’onaazot company which produces fertilisers.

Analysts will look at how Presi- dent Shavkat Mirzioyev, in power since September when Islam Karimov died, and his government handle this industrial accident – both releasing information about it and dealing with any potential local anger.

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(News report from Issue No. 318, published on Feb.24 2017)