Mudslide damages South Caucasus infrastructure

The Georgian public these days is focusing on the tragedy in the Darial Gorge rather than new charges brought against former president Mikheil Saakashvili. The incident occurred on the Georgian military road near the Russian border. According to employees of the local customs office and hydroelectric power plant, the automatic alert system established several months ago after a massive landslide informed them about the coming mudslide.

This time the disaster was even more destructive. The Darial hydroelectric power plant has been put out of action for ever, the country's former minister of energy Nino Chkhobadze said. It would be impossible to relaunch it. Of course it may be rebuilt, but it would take years to do so. The Darial hydroelectric power plant was providing the Kazbek region with power. The region, which borders North Ossetia, may not be big, but it is very important.

Two people have died. One was a Georgian national and another one Turkish. The River Terek brought their bodies to Russian territory. Several hundreds of people, including monks from the local monastery, border guards, customs officers and workers who were trying to modernize the Georgian military road, which connects Russia with Georgia and Armenia, have been evacuated with the help of helicopters.

The mudslide broke the Russian-Georgian-Armenian gas pipeline. As a result, Armenia was cut off from gas supplies. The incident occurred just before Georgian Prime MInister Irakli Garibashvili's visit to Yerevan. It is no surprise that before leaving for Armenia the head of the cabinet said that the restoration of the pipeline would be the government's top priority. According to information acquired by Vestnik Kavkaza, the restoration work has already started and on Saturday night Armenia will be able to receive gas in the necessary amounts. Still, the tragedy shows how fragile the infrastructure in the Darial Gorge is.

This is also true for the Georgian military road - the only land route connecting Georgia and Armenia with Russia. The highway was destroyed on several sites and the reconstruction will take at least two weeks, the cabinet says.

The scale of the catastrophe becomes clear when one takes into consideration the fact that President Giorgi Margelashvili and the minister of the interior visited the region three times in the last several days. The president tried to calm local residents, who have been cut off from the rest of the country and examine the restoration works, which continue despite unfavourable weather conditions.

The catastrophe hit the Darial Gorge at the wrong time. The number of tourists arriving from Russia was on the increase. All of them took the Georgian military road. In addition to that, Georgian agricultural products were delivered to Russia via the Georgian military road as well. After Russia banned EU and US food imports, Georgian producers thought they would be able to increase apple, pear and persimmon supplies to the country.

However the main problem is that the people now feel that a road of vital importance is being undermined over and over again. Scientists believe it may been caused by the damaged environment of the Main Caucasus Ridge, the gradual melting of ice on Kazbek and natural processes, which cannot be altered by humans.