KHABAROVSK, April 5 (AVN) - Command bodies, civil defence units and search and rescue formations of the Emergencies Ministry stationed in the Khabarovsk and Maritime territories, Yakutian autonomous republic, Amur region and Jewish autonomous district will hold a large-scale command post exercise from April 9 to 11 to train anti-flood operations, a ministry official said on Thursday.
Large ice blocks that will inevitably cause catastrophic floods are expected on the Lena, Vilyui, Aldan, Kolyma, Amur, Ussuri and Arsenyevsk Rivers, Lieutenant General Gennady Korotkin, head of the ministry's Far Eastern regional centre, told the Military News Agency.
Nine localities with the total population of over 6,000 people are likely to find themselves in the flood zone in the Khabarovsk territory alone, he said. Besides, floods threaten railway bridges across the Amur River near Khabarovsk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur, as well as the bridge across the Bureya River near the Chegdomyn village.
According to Korotkin, who will supervise the exercise, the main mission of the CPX is to practise units management in the flood period. Various variants of the Emergencies Ministry's forces application will be modelled and their interaction with units of the Defence and Interior Ministries will be trained.
The centre took into account the weather forecast and statistics of earlier floods in the Far East while getting ready for the exercise. Special icebreaking groups and necessary stocks of explosives have been set up to break ice fields and jams on the Lena. The Far Eastern military district commander, Colonel General Yuri Yakubov, assigned six SU-24 Flanker frontline bombers and 10 MI-8 Hip and MI-24V Hind helicopters to combat ice blocks.
Far Eastern law-enforcement and rescue units will provide about 30,000 people, almost 3,500 pieces of equipment and 10 cutters to deal with consequences of the spring floods. Evacuation of residents of the localities in the flood zone is not being planned at the moment. However those living on river banks in the north of the Khabarovsk territory, some sections of the Amur's lower straits and the Khor River, also in the Khabarovsk territory, may be relocated temporarily.