Construction of housing for wildfire victims to start on Saturday
Russia's Ministry of Regional Development has held an emergency conference call with officials from the regions hit by wildfires to announce that construction of new homes for fire victims will begin as early as Saturday August 7. The Ministry was spurred on by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin who set the deadline for completing the construction by the end of October. People who lost their summer cottages (dachas) will also receive compensation, although those who lost out-of-town luxury property are unlikely to be happy with the amount.
Regional governments were expected to complete all preparatory work on construction sites by late August 5.
"And we are to begin building before the end of this week on the prepared sites," said Konstantin Korolevsky, deputy minister of regional development and head of the project headquarters.
Contractors will not bid for the orders, to save time, because an official tender takes at least 45 days. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin authorised the Ministries of Regional Development and Economic Development to select one developer for all projects once the scale of the disaster became clear.
The ministries have not disclosed the name of this company, but they did not object to Putin's proposal either. The construction is already underway in some regions. But who is building the houses? It turned out that the Ministry of Regional Development had authorised local officials to select local companies. These officials were to send their proposals to the ministry. Five contractors have been selected this way, and three of the names are already posted on the ministry's website. The fourth one, Mosstroymekhanizatsia-5, proposed by the Moscow Region, was identified verbally. The Ministry has not yet given its go-ahead; however, the local government at the village of Beloomut confirmed to Izvestia that Mosstroymekhanizatsia was already working there.
"The site had been prepared, so we arranged a temporary connection to the power grid and began surveying [studying the soil to design the foundation for the building]," a source in the local administration said.
It looks like there will be no "single developer" in the end. It would take too much time to cancel the existing contracts and find a new contractor now, and Putin's deadline would inevitably be broken. To regain some control of the process, the Regional Development Ministry decided to place three to five webcams on the site to monitor the construction. However, they will not plant cameras in the Kirov, Tambov and Tula Regions because the construction sites are smaller.
They will start laying the foundations in Beloomut tomorrow. In the Lipetsk Region, five families who lost their homes to wildfires have already moved into new housing.
However, local officials remained undecided on what to do about the three buildings that caught fire from burning grass, rather than from the forest fire. They had to consult the federal government.
"Just include them in the programme," Korolevsky snapped. "The terminology shouldn't make any difference – peat bog fires in the Moscow Region or steppe fires in Tambov."
But is it possible to build a good building in such a short period? Most experts agree that it is, provided that they are built on the same site (this saves the time needed for land allotment), fast construction technology is used and the structure is commissioned before interior finishing.
The new houses should not necessarily be built on burned ground. The Regional Development Ministry has posted a standard questionnaire for regional officials on its website which includes a question whether the new house will be built on the same site. In other words, there is an option to build elsewhere. It has yet to be decided how many houses will be built in new locations because the ministry has not yet received answers from all the regions.
In Beloomut, they are building on a new site because they did not want to spend too much money to clear rubble, analysts explain. The land allotment issue was resolved in a minute:
"We had an area reserved for development, a residential project for young families, but we rezoned it because we have an emergency situation," a source in the local administration said.
Connecting to utilities is still a problem. It requires serious engineering and cannot be rushed. True, we have an emergency; but normally, construction requires extensive preparatory work.
"Building a durable and reliable structure requires a detailed feasibility study," said Alexei Shepel, chairman of the board of the S.Holding construction company.
Compensation for lost dachas is also a problem. The prime minister did say the owners will be compensated. A ministry official said the property will be evaluated at 50% of the average cost of regular housing in a specific region, varying between 22,000 rubles per square meter in the Ulyanovsk Region and 43,000 roubles in the Moscow Region. But this isn't much.
"There are dachas and there are dachas. This compensation will probably be enough for a modest wooden summer cottage, but not for a better house suitable as a year-round residence," said Alexander Batushansky from the Reshenie consultancy.
"Unfortunately, Russia has no law to guarantee government compensation for disaster victims," said Igor Nikolayev from the legal firm Nikolaew & Partners. "Therefore, compensation is up to the government in each case."
In fact, the government does not have to pay any compensation at all, and people should insure their own property, Batushansky said. In this case, the government has made a commitment to help. What about the owners of insured property – will they get any government compensation? The Regional Development Ministry has yet to announce an answer at this point.
Alexandra Ponomaryova
