#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Snow drifts have been and remain a huge problem for our city. And Norilsk snow removal services are the only ones in the country that were initially engaged not just in road clearing, but in snowfighting.
Until Norilsk learnt to cope with the snow element, everyday work and life often came to a standstill with the arrival of another snowstorm. Norilsk residents then went to fight the white enemy hand-to-hand: they used shovels to clear roads and railway tracks. In a snowstorm it was allowed to stop almost all other works and to bring people out to fight against snow drifts.
In January 1937 in Norilsk the first experimental snow fighting station was established. Not surprisingly, it happened even earlier than the first transport office appeared in the settlement. The first single snowploughs ‘guarded’ the railway, it suffered the most. When the first railway tracks were laid in 1936, the first snow protection fences in Norilsk appeared along them. But despite all efforts, snowfalls stopped the work of railway workers almost every winter: trains derailed, locomotives were completely covered with snow, and drivers got injured or even killed. No sooner were the tracks cleared than a new blizzard began.
One of the most important ‘commanders’ in this war was Mikhail Potapov. He was a railway worker, engineer, inventor, exiled to Norilsk as an ‘enemy of the people’. Norilsk residents nicknamed him Grandfather Snow Blower, and there was even a local joke: ‘If you met Snow Blower, there would be a blizzard!’. Potapov invented and obtained a copyright certificate for the design of snow shields.
Expensive mechanical snow removal was used mainly for clearing the main roads, there were not enough bulldozers. Therefore, cheap manual labour remained the main ‘means’ of snow removal. This continued until 1955, when Norilsk faced ‘the need to switch to mechanisation of all major processes’. This vague wording, taken from documents of those years, hides a simple fact. Norillag (the Stalin era Norilsk forced labour camp) was closing, the prisoners were being released, and there was no one with a shovel to remove snow on a daily basis.
It was in 1955 that the mechanised snow removal shop was separated from the Central motor convoy into an independent subdivision. As it was reported at the Norilsk scientific and technical conference in 1958, only streets and passages were covered with snow removal in the city – only 20 per cent of the total area. There was no talk of snow removal from yards. Nevertheless, the developed strategy and tactics of snow removal began to bear fruit.
The technopark of the snow removal shop grew gradually. At first it included only ten bulldozers, four loaders and six snowploughs and motor graders each. By 1962 there were already 65 bulldozers alone. In 1977 the shop was transformed into the Department of Roads and Snowploughing, which was the main ‘snowplough’ on the city streets, in the industrial zone, and on country roads. The DRS then served the numerous Potapov shields as well.
In the 1970s and 1980s, not to mention earlier times, a huge mountain of snow in every yard and a cleared perimeter along the entrances were a typical yard landscape. In the spring, a tractor would come and spread the accumulated snow to speed up its melting. Loaders that could not only shovel the snow into a hill in the middle of the yard, but also load it onto trucks for removal, did not appear until the late 1980s.
In the History Spot’s previous issue, we talked about the history of northern meteorological observations.
Follow us on Telegram, VKontakte.
Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Norilsk residents and the Nornickel Polar Branch’s archives
