Residents of the Tuapse village need volunteer help to clean up oil spills on the beach.
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Residents of the village of Gizel-Dere near Tuapse collected over 200 bags of oil-contaminated pebbles. They asked for volunteer help to completely clean the coastal area.
As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," a drone attack on the night of April 16 in Tuapse killed two people and injured seven more. Sixty residential buildings were damaged, and five private homes were completely destroyed. In late April, several private homes near the oil refinery were severely damaged after further attacks. On May 5, authorities reported the relocation of families displaced by drone attacks into five apartments.
Residents of the Gizel-Dere boarding house settlement in the Tuapse district collected over 200 bags of oil-covered pebbles, but volunteers are needed to completely clean the area, Evgeniya Krasilnikova, a resident of the settlement, told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent on May 12.
"We had a three-day cleanup from May 9 to 11. With the support of the administration. They provided supplies and equipment, and rescuers from Kuban-Spas were also there. We collected over 200 bags of contaminated pebbles, but there are still places where the equipment can't reach. "We have a very narrow coastal valley, and the railway runs close to the shore, so many breakwaters and fenders have been installed along the shore to prevent the tide from eroding it. The pockets between them, however, have proven difficult or even inaccessible for equipment. We're currently considering how to clean them, wash them, and repaint them. While residents of the village and surrounding communities actively participated in the cleanup, we now also need volunteers," she noted.
Krasilnikova emphasized that the owner of one of the guesthouses in the village has agreed to provide rooms for volunteers at the cost of utilities.
Alan Kodzaev, the coordinator of the coastal cleanup headquarters in the village, confirmed that various methods for clearing the space between the fenders and breakwaters are currently being considered. "We might build temporary bridges, or perhaps we'll land from the water and clean them, collecting contaminated pebbles that way," he told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.
The head of the Shepsninsky territorial department, Alexandra Volodina, confirmed to a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that work to clean beaches from oil is underway throughout the entire settlement. "We started at the same time as the city. Work on the beaches is underway, everything is being cleaned. We're trying to cope on our own," she emphasized.
Volodina found it difficult to name the exact amount of contaminated soil collected, emphasizing that a final assessment has not yet been made. "It's different on every beach. Somewhere around 500 bags, somewhere around 600, somewhere even 1000," she noted.
From April 16 to May 1, four fires broke out at the oil refinery and marine terminal in Tuapse following drone attacks. Additionally, on April 24, after booms broke due to rising river waters, an oil spill occurred into the Black Sea. The environmental consequences of the attacks on Tuapse's oil infrastructure can be found in the "Caucasian Knot" report "Fires and "Oil Rain": Key Information on the Environmental Disaster in Tuapse".
Note that a regional emergency regime is in effect throughout the entire Tuapse Okrug . You can read about emergency assessment criteria, response levels, structures, and resources for eliminating the consequences in the Caucasian Knot's document "Emergency Situation Regime (ES)".
Materials on the consequences of the fuel oil spill have been collected by the Caucasian Knot on the page "Eco-disaster in Kuban".
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