JULY 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The body of the final animal missing from Tbilisi Zoo after a flood swept into it in June has been found in central Tbilisi, media reported. Salima was an Ussuri tiger. Last year she gave birth to three cubs.
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(News report from Issue No. 239, published on July 9 2015)
JUNE 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – TBILISI — Georgia’s government launched an investigation into the causes of a flood this month that killed at least 20 people, injured dozens more, flooded the city’s zoo and destroyed hundreds of buildings.
Local pressure groups, though, criticised the authorities for their slow response to the worst natural disaster to hit Tbilisi in living memory. This criticism could sting the ruling Georgian Dream coalition and damage their already fragile public support.
Nick Davitashvili, from the environmental activist group Guerilla Gardening Tbilisi, said: “The response by the government left a lot to be desired. Volunteers had to take on part of the relief efforts.”
Muddy, destroyed cars still lay around Heroes Square in the centre of the city more than week after the flood on June 14.
Immediately after the flood, thousands of volunteers shovelled mud and donated clothes and medicine to tho. The government, though, has now said that volunteers’ role is over.
“The risks are increasing and we are worried about the young people,” PM Irakli Garibahsvili said.
The ministry of environment has said that it is looking into setting up an early warning system for future disasters but the Caucasus Environmental NGO Network, the country’s largest environmental NGO said that this was an attempt to deflect responsibility for the flood.
“No disaster threat analysis, or preventive measures, have been conducted in Tbilisi for 15 years,” it said in a statement.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) -At least 19 people died after flash floods hit Tbilisi, smashing into houses, ripping up road and destroying city’s zoo
Torrential rain turned a small creek that runs through the city into a wild, uncontrollable river. It burst its banks and swept along recently paved and concreted areas into residential parts of Tbilisi.
Several animals escaped the flooded zoo, including lions, tigers, bears and panthers but dozens others died. A cornered tiger reportedly attacked and killed a man in a flooded warehouse on June 17. Police later shot dead the tiger.
The authorities ordered people to stay inside until they had re-captured all the animals. Video showed a hippo roaming through central Tbilisi before being hit with a tranquilliser dart and brought under control.
The carcasses of dead lions, bears and deer floated through flooded streets, past smashed cars caked with mud and houses missing walls.
This was one of the worst natural disaster to hit Tbilisi in living memory.
PM Irakli Garibashvili said around 200 people lost their homes and that the cost of repairing the city would be around 50m euro.
But the damage to Georgia’s prestige may be worse. People were quick to portion blame for the floods, many saying poor construction work had destroyed the river’s run-off area.
Nana Janashia, director of the Caucasus Environmental NGO Network (CENN), also said the non-existence of an emergency plan was also a problem.
“This was absolutely predictable and is the result of high rain precipitation, human impact and poor infrastructures dating back to Soviet times,” she said.
Others blamed former president Mikheil Saakashvili who initiated the construction of the new highway. In a 2009 article, the magazine Liberali said the construction of the highway could lead to potential disastrous floods.
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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)
APRIL 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A rise in snowmelt, triggered by an increase in temperatures, has caused rivers to burst their banks, media reported. The Karaganda oblast’s emergency department said nearly 2,000 homes had been flooded.
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(News report from Issue No. 227, published on April 15 2015)
APRIL 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Mudslides in Tajikistan have killed at least 10 people, media reported. The mudslides highlight the often poor state of infrastructure in Tajikistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 226, published on April 8 2015)
APRIL 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – An earthquake measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale shook northern Armenia. There were no causalities but the earthquake was recorded in Yerevan with a strength of 2 to 3 on the Richter Scale.
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(News report from Issue No. 226, published on April 8 2015)
MARCH 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Three Kazakhs and a Ukrainian opera singer born in Kazakhstan died in the Germanwings plane crash, the Kazakh foreign ministry said. The plane, carrying 150 people, crashed in the French Alps (March 24). It was flying from Barcelona to Dusseldorf.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
MARCH 11 2015 (The Bulletin) – Underlining his credentials as a far more outward looking leader than his predecessor, Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said he would travel to Japan for a UN conference on disaster reduction. He’ll likely make time to meet with Japanese officials to improve relations too.
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(News report from Issue No. 222, published on March 11 2015)
JAN. 5 2015, (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan has said that it will increase by 50% the size of its grain reserves, media reported. Azerbaijan wants to hedge against grain harvest fluctuations by increasing its stored supply to 750,000 tonnes from 500,000 tonnes. Its intervention will push up grain prices.
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(News report from Issue No. 213, published on Jan. 7 2015)
DEC. 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The consortium developing the Karachaganak oil and gas site (KPO) in west Kazakhstan denied that a gas leak at its plant poisoned 20 children and three teachers at a school in a nearby village.
Ambulances rushed the children and teachers to hospital after they suddenly fainted on Nov. 28.
KPO made the statement after Kazakh media widely quoted the Prosecutor-General for Kazakhstan’s western region, Serik Karamanov, saying that there had been a brief gas leak the day before the mass fainting at the Karachaganak site only a few kilometres away from the village.
The KPO statement said: “A mobile environmental monitoring station has also been despatched to Berezovka village and has reported no exceedances above the official Maximum Permissible Concentration limits.”
Whether the Kazakh authorities agree, remains to be seen.
Mr Karamanov was clear about what he thought may have been the cause of the poisoning.
“It has been established that at 14:19 on November 27 at the gas-processing complex of KPO, there occurred a discharge of condensate for a period of two minutes,” he said according to local media reports.
The incident is a reminder of the tension at local levels between the foreign-led projects in the energy sector and local communities who accuse them of not doing enough to protect their environment.
Karachaganak is important to Kazakhstan. It is considered one of the country’s most successful projects, and produces around 40% of Kazakhstan’s gas and 13% of its oil. Britain’s BG Group and Italy’s ENI own a 29.5% stake each, Chevron owns 18%, Russia’s Lukoil owns 13.5% and the Kazakh state oil and gas company, KazMunaiGas owns 10%.
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(News report from Issue No. 212, published on Dec. 10 2014)