Another portion of questions regarding Oymyakon, the Pole of Cold, I received from a Hungarian journalist, who was also wondering how people could live in such extreme weather conditions.
First are there outside any animals at such a cold temperature?
If you mean domestic animals, in Oymyakon some keep watchdogs outside so to protect the private territory. In this case dogs stay in warm kennels with felt layers.
If farm animals like cattles and poultries, they are kept in a special barns.
If wild, hunters say they may meet elks, deer, raindeer, hares. Bears, as you know, sleep in the winter.
Second what does it happen if somebody can’t keep his/her house warm? Does the house totally ‘destroyed’ by the radical cold?
In such cases, houses will be totally frozen, impossible to live in. So it is vital to keep houses warm.
How many people do freeze to death in an average year?
No official stats available. However, the misfortune happens and usually to travellers stuck on the way due to broken cars or lost in forest or lose consciousness for health and other reasons. Very often people get their extremities frostbitten, if they spend much time (a few hours) outside and frozen, as result they may have parts of their body amputated. This may occure, for instance, if a person had heart attack in a lonely place and fell.
And how many tourists or non-inhabitants?
A dozen of tourists per month, perhaps.
What kind of materials do you use for pipelines (water, heating etc.)?
A few hours cast-iron pipelines were vastly used. Now plastic prevails. Yet in village houses most people do not use water pipelines. They prefer to keep water in tanks and take liquid by a bucket. Instead of taps they have wash-hand-stands. Oymyakon residents use furnace heating mostly. If they’ve got enough money, they can afford gas heating systems with boilers.
How can you travel on long distances? Are the roads usable for cars?
Locals prefer to travel by cars. Cheap, you know. Round trip by plane may costs 400-500 USD depending on distance.
What can you do if the car isn’t working anymore and you stick in the middle of Siberia?
Leave the car and walk for help. Otherwise one may be frozen to death. Sometimes it happens.
Are there functioning mobil phone service?
Only in cities and the administrative centers of republic’s regions.
UPDATE:
Above-listed answers and other AskYakutia’s information were successfully used in Zoltan Molnar’s story published at the Hungarian news portal Origo.hu on January 14, 2009.
Similar Posts:
- Is it dangerous to travel to Oymyakon, the Pole of Cold in winter?
- An interview about the life in Oymyakon, the coldest village on the Earth. Part I.
- Life in Oymyakon
- How do the people of Yakutsk survive in extreme cold?
- How to dress in Yakutia in the middle of winter?
