Recovery after flooding in the Far East

2 base stations left the network - Amur Region

In late July, after prolonged rains, which took place in June in Yakutia, Trans-Baikal Territory and North China, the water level in the Amur began to rise to critical levels. The situation worsened after the beginning of August on the territory of the Khabarovsk Territory, the Amur Region and the Jewish Autonomous Region had the annual rainfall. This led to a devastating flood, in which 120 localities suffered. All this did not happen suddenly, so we managed to mobilize technical reserves to ensure reliable operation of mobile communications.

In fact, the flooding began on August 7: around 1:00 pm there was a sharp increase in the load on infrastructure in the Blagoveshchensk district of the Amur Region. By 14:00 the load exceeded the New Year's peak 1.5 times. Thanks to the work of the emergency services, it was possible to protect key facilities, and thanks to the network scheme, which implies overlapping from neighboring base stations, it was possible to maintain coverage by amplifying the signal.
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The most difficult situation was in Komsomolsk-on-Amur.


Near Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Equipment moved from the ground to a temporary stand. By the time the work was completed, the water was 10 centimeters from the equipment.

According to the meteorologists' worsened forecast, the building in which the switching center was installed fell into the area of ​​possible flooding. In the case of flooding the switch without a connection, approximately 300 thousand subscribers could remain. Therefore, around the perimeter of the building, a hermetic fence 30 meters long was quickly installed. We erected dams from sandbags (it took about 2 thousand bags), put 2 motor-pumps. With the help of the regional government, a second diesel generator was delivered from Khabarovsk, and the necessary fuel supply was increased. On the switch made a supply of water, food and medicine. Also bought boots and gasoline. The water level in the storm sewers was checked almost every hour - the first threat of flooding came from there. As a result, Komsomolsk-on-Amur did not remain without contact for a minute without contact with the outside world - we managed to keep the line.


Protecting the building with a bag of barricades


Build a fence near the switch


Dismantling to protect equipment from flooding. In the photo, Marat Davlatmamadov is an engineer for the operation of the mobile and transport network, the technical management of Huawei Survey Technologies, Birobidzhan Branch.

During the flood on the territory of the Amur region , three stations were damaged in the villages of Ust-Ivanovka, Vladimirovka and Kasatkino. The containers were flooded, but the efforts of the technical directorate staff and the operations support department partially saved the equipment.

In the Khabarovsk Territory and the Jewish Autonomous Region, we knew about the arrival of water in advance, and understood what territory the flood would pass through. At each point, backup power sources with the necessary fuel were prepared, additional emergency brigades were organized. The state and readiness of facilities and communication lines that fall into the areas of possible flooding were checked, and the monitoring of the network was enhanced. A week later, 7 base stations were flooded. The modules went up to the towers, the equipment was dismantled from the hardware and protected, there were no interruptions in communication. Our employees took an active part in preventing communication breaks in the affected areas: they dismantled and removed equipment from the flood zones, took part in emergency recovery work, often once helped competitors - and now just colleagues.

A total of 12 base stations were flooded during the flood, half of them in the Khabarovsk Territory. Another 12 base stations were raised above the water level.


Emergency engineer at the time of arrival at one of the objects


Some of the settlements began to look like this.

In Kukelevo, the station was saved - it was on a hill, so it gave a connection to several brave souls who decided to survive the flood in the village and protect their property from marauders.


Dismantling equipment. On the photo is Grigory Pilipenko, head of the network construction department of the Amur branch.

In the villages of Nizhneleninskoe and Novoe, we lost two stations. In the village of Dezhnev, Leninsky district had to be turned off due to the risk of flooding. In the villages of Leninskoye and Blessed, as well as the villages of Amurzet and Radde, they managed to lift the main equipment by 1-2 meters, which was enough for protection. The Babstovo settlement, where the Emergency Situations Ministry headquarters and temporary accommodation center for evacuated residents were concentrated, as well as additional batteries in the Amurzet village were added to increase the autonomous operation time of stations in the event of a power outage.


Machine resident with. Amurzet EAO involved in rescue operations

The headquarters of the Ministry of Emergency Situations and local residents concentrated around it increased the load on the local area of ​​the network, first by 20% of the estimated, then by 40%. We have expanded the capacity of voice channels by 150-200%, depending on the object.


This station continued broadcasting. On the photo is Vladimir Vasilevich, senior engineer for the construction of a mobile access network.

Along with providing high-quality communications to the population of the flooded areas, Beeline provided communication to those who left their homes (which is a total of about 17 thousand people). In the temporary accommodation centers of the victims, we deployed contact points and gave phones for free calls to relatives.

In the affected localities, most often people remained with telephones, but without communication. Therefore, we distributed free payment cards so that people could talk to relatives. In two localities, there were few telephones, so we left the victims along their own “handset” with a SIM card with an unlimited tariff, they all used them together.

Centrally, we sent assistance to Klyuchi, Volkovo, Gribskoye, Kalinino, Konstantinovka, Krestovozdvizhenka, Poyarkovo in the Amur Region; Babstovo (TAC House of Culture and Agricultural Engineering), Pronkino (TAC camp "Scarlet Sails"), Razdolnoye (TAP camp "Pearl"); Priamurskiy (TAC House of Culture), Nikolaevka (TAC school number 7), Obluchye (TAC "PU-6") in the Jewish Autonomous Region.

Work with other teams

MTS and Megafon fought with us for every minute of uptime. Megafon deployed a mobile base station in Ivanovka, where there were simply no other channels. MTS in the village of Slavyanka launched a new prefabricated station. Rostelecom installed 10 new satellite communication terminals, and also provided temporary accommodation points with communications. I don’t know how to do it at the marketing level, but the technical services definitely worked shoulder to shoulder. The Huawei Technologies Services and Vertical Stroy DV were also of great help. They made it possible in many ways to quickly restore the flooded base stations.

At the station in the village of Kukelevo, Leninsky District of the Jewish Autonomous Region, Rostelecom OJSC’s telephone connection disappeared. Operatively, we provided a channel from the village of Leninsky to Kukelevo to restore the fixed connection. A week later, “Megafon” in the temporary accommodation for residents of flooded areas - with. Babstovo - he restored his cellular communications network also at the expense of the Beeline transport channel.

Since August 24, we have introduced emergency technical roaming - as with the similar situation in Krymsk, any of the subscribers with a SIM-card of any operator could use our network. In the same way, an emergency call is made at 112 in the usual time; for example, the connection is routed through any available network of any operator.

Total

It should be said separately about the work of other people that is invisible to many, and done long before the emergency.

Firstly, the trunk workers - thanks to their more than competent work, they managed to save transport channels. There was not a single point where the network would disappear due to a drop in transport - moreover, we often helped other operators with our own channels. Secondly, the network planning department - we, probably, a hundred times managed to rejoice at how correctly the places for the station were chosen. This was especially noticeable in the Amur Region. Thirdly, our professional paranoids are risk planning. Thanks to them, we had all the necessary resources in emergency warehouses, channels and equipment were duplicated as necessary. Perhaps for many it will sound pathetic, but in such situations one feels what it means to have a big company behind. In this regard, I remember my grandfather from Kukelev, who was completely cut off with water, who, during a call to his relatives, said: “Beeline did not abandon us”.

In conclusion, I would like to thank all those who helped to cope with this situation and are working with it now. In every region and in every locality there are heroes. Now I want to separately name a number of names of people, without which we simply could not do it. This is only the part of the teams that I encountered directly with the work:

• Pavel Chaykin and Nadezhda Shablovskaya - they organized the provision of communications for the victims.
• Denis Makarenko - he coordinated the actions of engineers.
• Grigory Pilipenko, Artyom Petrov, Vladimir Vasilyevich and Aleksandra Kravtsova - in the villages of Ust-Ivanovka, Vladimirovka and Kasatkino they saved equipment from already flooded objects
• Marat Davlatmamadov, Strelnikov Vitaly, Chalykh Andrey, Kasatkin Alexander - were engaged in evacuating equipment from the flooded places, lifting equipment above, participating in the expansion of the battery capacity at the stations at risk.
• Alexander Ivanov - for coordinating actions to ensure work on the switch.
• Yuri Salnikov, Denis Trofimchuk - for the continuous solution of the multitude of problems of ensuring the network operability.
• Verkhoturov Dmitry - for the dedicated work and the use of non-standard measures for lifting equipment above the level of flooding.

Now the situation has stabilized and work has already been completed on the restoration of lost points throughout the territory.