Above
is a picture of the Lena River
during the bitter Russian winter.
The Lena Highway (road of mud) is nearby.
 |
As they say, a picture
is worth a thousand words.
How would you like to be caught in a
mess like that?
This is the story of Russia's Lena
Highway, aka the Highway from Hell.
The Russian
Federal Highway
runs from Moscow city
to the Siberian city of Yakutsk.
The last 600 miles is called the
"Lena
Highway".
This bizarre road runs parallel to the Lena River
on the final leg to Yakutsk.
As you can readily see for yourself
from the picture,
in the
summertime, the Lena Highway turns
completely to mud
whenever it rains.
There are several
Internet sites that consider the Lena
Highway to be the worst road in the world.
Personally I would give this dubious honor
to Bolivia's Road of Death (next story).
After all, no one gets killed in the mud,
just incredibly aggravated. People
actually die on the Bolivian road all the
time.
Yakutsk
is the capital of the Yakutia
Republic, part of the vast Russian
region known as Siberia.
The old
joke is 'War is God's way of teaching us
geography'.
With that in mind, any
kid who grew up playing the board game
Risk
remembers
Yakutsk
and neighboring
Kamchatka
as
two
territories with weird names located up at the
top of Asia. As a kid, I had never
heard of these places until I played
Risk.
Nor did it ever
dawn on me that people actually live there
(as if getting stuck in the mud is considered
living... )
The road of mud isn't the only
problem. It seems that people who live
in Yakutsk were born to suffer.
Yakutsk is
considered the coldest city on
earth, with January temperatures averaging
-45 °F. The coldest temperatures ever recorded
outside Antarctica occur in the basin of the
Yana River just to
the northeast of
Yakutia.
Yakutsk, the
capital, is the world's biggest city built on
top of continuous permafrost. Most
houses are mounted on concrete piles
to keep from sinking.
Surprisingly,
for most of the year, the driving is
excellent. The road
to Yakutsk is so
frozen that the road is frozen solid.
It is only in the summer that the road
periodically becomes impassable.
In the autumn the
road freezes
back and becomes
even better than most soil roads.
In the dead of
winter there is no problem as vehicles drive
over the frozen Lena Highway.
Cars are allowed
to drive up
to 70 kmh (45 mph).
In fact, one report suggested some vehicles
even drive over the Lena River as well in
the winter! It becomes a solid block
of ice.
But watch out for
Summertime!
Believe or not, Yakutsk is actually cut off
from the world much of the time during the
summer. In a story I read about a 2001
flood caused by the overflowing Lena River, it said Yakutsk
does not even have railroad!
This means that in the summer when it rains,
Yakutsk is virtually inaccessible except by
boat or plane.
And even the boats are not much
help.... the Lena River
is impassable for
large stretches of the year when it is full
of loose ice, or when the ice cover is not
sufficiently thick to support traffic, or
when the water level is high and the river
turbulent with spring flooding.
Get
this: July temperatures often
exceed 90 °F! This makes
the Yakutia region
among the greatest in the world for seasonal
temperature differentials.
This
helps explain the mud road fiasco which you are
about to witness. When it rains in Yakutsk, it pours!
And the rains turn the Road to Yakutsk into
a quagmire.
Unfortunately, this major artery does not have an
asphalt
surface
even
though it is a vital
Federal highway.
Attempts have
been made to put down a proper surface, but
the road immediately turns to mush
the moment it thaws making repairs
impossible.
Consequently, in the
summer, every
time it rains,
hundreds of cars become
stuck in the mud.
Yakutia is an area of permafrost. The
Lena Highway
melts down to 1 meter every summer for 2...3
months (usually July and August) - that
makes it impossible to build usual roads
(using asphalt or concrete) there. Such
roads are called "zimnik" ("zima" means
"winter" in Russian).
In the autumn the road
freezes back and becomes even better than
usual soil roads, but that is little
consolation to those stuck in the summertime mud. The pictures you
are about to see
were made in
August 2006 at the start of the problem.
Ultimately 600 cars got stuck there. In
other words, as bad as things are in the
pictures you are about to view, they only
hint at how impossible the conditions can
really be.
A car can be trapped in the quagmire for days.
According to witnesses,
hunger and lack of the fuel
are all part of these mud
traps. One woman
even gave
birth
to a child right in the public bus she was
riding because no
ambulance could possibly get to her.
Making things worse,
people are afraid to come to the rescue.
There is a report of construction teams
that were afraid to appear on site
when called. It turned out that
during their previous visit
they were beaten
by people who had been
stuck in the jam for a few days.
So now the cars and
trucks are left to fend for themselves.
Only in Russia.
Lawlessness is common.
People
often break the
locks on the trucks in a search of food and
warm clothing.
Fuel, food, firearms and steel tow-line
cables are
needed most during the
rainy days
on the Lena Highway.
Apparently Russia is infamous for its bad roads.
For instance, the cynics insist Russia's bad
roads had more to do with stopping the
advance of the German army in World War II than
anything the Red Army did.
I decided
to ask my friend Olga about the Russian
roads. Olga was raised in Russia, but
now works here in Houston. This is
what Olga had to say.
From:
Olga B
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009
12:23 PM
To: Rick Archer
Subject: the
russian roads
Back when
I was growing up my parents never could
afford a car (well, they actually still
don't have
one).
Consequently,
we did not have much
to do with the roads problems all
that much.
But it is common
knowledge the roads are quite
an issue in Russia.
We even have a
national song about how bad our
roads are. And
it has lots of verses. :)
|
 |
It seems like Russia could do something
about this road. After all, America
built the Alcan Highway in Alaska under
similar conditions.
Driving upon these roads in
summer when the snows have
melted seems like
a very stupid
idea.
But
the authorities
never even meant for the Lena Highway to be used
in the summertime. Apparently the
ancient way of reaching Yakutsk in the
summer was by boat. Now, even though
it is the 21st Century, this tradition
continues.
Yakutsk can only be
reached by ferry in the summer. The
road dead ends on the wrong side of Yakutsk.
In fact, there is no bridge anywhere in the Sakha
Republic that even crosses the mighty Lena.
But just because it is a
very bad idea to drive doesn't mean people don't try
anyway. After all, most people in this
area are have no choice if they wish to
reach another part of Russia. Unless they own a
plane or a boat, the Road of Mud is the only
way in and out of the city.
These poor
people were born to suffer.
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment