How Northern shift workers work and die during a pandemic

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In the spring, large foci of coronavirus infection formed in several shift camps in the North - they were quarantined, and the shift was extended to workers for several months. In Yakutia and Yamal, employees of enterprises went to rallies in order to achieve evacuation. There were no protests in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, but there two workers were brought to the hospital from the gold mine already in serious condition, and they died a few days later. "Snob" told what is happening in the northern shift camps during the pandemic.

In March, bulldozer driver Viktor Seredny from Krasnoyarsk was offered to take a watch at the Olimpiada Mining and Processing Plant (GOK) earlier than he had planned. Victor was going to work on April 2, but he was told that if he did not have time to arrive before March 26, then due to quarantine he would be able to get there next time only in May. The middle one decided to go because of the money. In addition to his wife and daughter, he supported an elderly mother: he bought her medicine and paid bills, his daughter finished school, and the family collected money for her studies at the university.

Victor, a sturdy 54-year-old man, took a job at the mining and processing plant four years ago. The plant is located at a gold deposit in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, one of the largest in Russia. It is being developed by the Polyus company, owned by the family of billionaire Suleiman Kerimov. Working at Polyus with Krasnoyarsk shift workers is considered prestigious: salaries are high, and living conditions are more comfortable than at many other enterprises. Polyus employees live in hostels in the Severo-Yeniseisky District, which belongs to the Far North - to the nearest village you need to drive 80 kilometers along a broken road.

Victor arrived at the field, checked into a hostel and worked as usual. At the end of April, he felt unwell and turned to the local paramedic. The doctor diagnosed him with a sore throat, gave him antipyretic pills and sent him to be treated on his own. The temperature could not be brought down, and soon Victor returned to the first-aid post with health complaints. He was tested for coronavirus, which showed a negative result.

Nevertheless, Viktor was sent to the House of Culture for shift workers - the building was turned into a quarantine zone for workers with a temperature. The sick lay on bunk beds, placed almost close to each other. Then it became known about the outbreak of coronavirus at the enterprise - according to three workers contacted by "Snob", at that time there were not enough doctors at the field, so often sick people could not get medical help quickly.

In the recreation center, Victor asked three times to call an ambulance, says his colleague, who was in quarantine with him (he asked "Snob" not to give his name), the doctors on duty agreed to arrange hospitalization only for the third time. At that moment, according to Viktor's relatives, it was already difficult for him to breathe.

Seredny left the territory of the field in an ambulance on May 7. The car was moving towards the urban-type settlement of Severo-Yeniseisky, but broke down halfway. Then Victor called his wife Elena. “We are waiting for another car,” he said, choking on his cough. When Seredny was nevertheless taken to the regional hospital, he spoke to Elena again on the phone: he complained that he was suffocating, he only had to take four steps, and promised to call back later.

Victor never called back. Due to stress, Elena's blood pressure increased, so her sister Svetlana Lobkova began talking to doctors in her place. On May 8, she learned that Viktor's condition was classified as serious. He was sent by sanitary aviation to the regional hospital, because the necessary equipment was not available in the village. In a helicopter, he was connected to a mobile ventilator and put into an artificial coma. Already in Krasnoyarsk, it turned out that Viktor's lungs were damaged by 65 percent.

Victor stayed in a coma for 10 days and died without regaining consciousness. This was the first death of an employee of the enterprise. About 6,000 people work at Polyus; over the past month, according to official data, about 1,400 have been infected. The company explains this by the fact that absolutely everyone who is in the field is being tested for coronavirus.

The workers interviewed by Snob claim that in reality there may be more infected people, because many people with characteristic symptoms, like Viktor, report a negative test result. Some asymptomatic employees were last tested in early May.

"We'll all get sick"

“We have a favorable environment for the development of infections,” explains Nikolai, a Polyus worker, who asked not to give his last name because of fear of dismissal. “They say: keep your distance. But how to do it? We live crowded: together in buses, in hostels, in showers, canteens - everywhere there are queues, crowds. And it's the same at work. I work in the car: the shiftman got out, I took the wheel and immediately drove off. Recently, they had regular tests for coronavirus. There were so many people crowded into the small room that they stepped on their feet. We will all get better here, people who are not fools understand this."

When the pandemic had just begun, Nikolai denied the existence of the coronavirus, and then received a positive test result. For two weeks he lived with another 200 shift workers in the former gym, which was also converted into a quarantine zone for asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19. They promised to relocate him to a tent city, which the military deployed on the territory of the enterprise - there were also people with coronavirus there. Nikolai got scared: his acquaintances lived in the tent city, who, because of the cold, had to sleep in their outerwear.

On May 26, the shift workers posted an appeal to the media on social networks, in which they asked for help. It said that in the field camp, workers lay on dirty mattresses, and the tents were not heated in any way. "This is the cry of the soul of people who are not allowed to go home, they cannot leave, as they are in the quarantine zone, but it is impossible to be in such conditions!" - the shift workers wrote. After that, the workers were moved from the tent camp to the hostels.

“If they had transferred me to“Titka”(as Nikolai calls the tent camp due to the fact that it is located near the Titimukhte quarry. - Ed.), Then I would have gone, what to do. It's not like living in a box on the street. If you pay attention to everything that is happening here, you will go crazy. I came here almost immediately after school, I have been working for eight years. And I will work until they get fired. I myself am from a workers' village in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. We had a mine, a town-forming enterprise - it was closed and plundered. 90 percent of the men went to watch, because they know nothing else but how to work with their hands. We are not here because of the good life, we all have loans, but there is nowhere else to go,”says Nikolay.

On May 28, Nikolai was sent to work. By this time, he had already passed four tests: the first was positive, the second and third were negative, the result of the fourth was still unknown. During the day, Nikolai talked with other shift workers at the enterprise and in the canteen, and then received the result of the last analysis - positive.

“It turns out that they sent me to infect,” Nikolai comments. After that, he was again isolated, now in a hostel.

As the shift worker says, during a pandemic, new employees come to the field. Several of Nikolai's acquaintances are now undergoing quarantine and taking tests before starting work. Open vacancies can also be found on the Polyus website.

According to the Governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Alexander Uss, the complexity of the elimination of the outbreak at the field is related, among other things, to the continuity of the technological process. On May 18, the general director of Polyus, Pavel Grachev, said that there was no threat of stopping the enterprise.

“The country needs gold,” Nikolai sighs, “production cannot be stopped, then all equipment can be thrown into a landfill. The company will lose a lot of money."

They were suffocating in front of their eyes, but no one helped them

Vyacheslav Malikov, 59, an excavator operator from Polyus, fell ill in early May, during his regular shift. He continued to go to work, his wife Tatyana Malikova told local reporters. According to her, Vyacheslav and other employees were allowed to work with a cough and fever after a daily morning medical examination.

On May 8, Malikov was tested for coronavirus, which turned out to be negative, while his assistant was diagnosed with COVID-19. The men worked in the same excavator cab.

On May 15, Vyacheslav himself went to the first-aid post, and then moved to quarantine in the building of the House of Culture. On the same day, he called his wife and said that he was suffocating, while, according to Tatyana, then there were no doctors nearby. Vyacheslav could not leave the field on his own: the regional authorities restricted access to the Severo-Yenisei region, setting up posts there to measure the temperature.

Tatyana and Vyacheslav's two daughters contacted the Polyus employees, whose phones they could find - thanks to this, Vyacheslav was given an oxygen cushion and took a picture of his lungs, which showed bilateral pneumonia. The women also phoned the administration of the Severo-Yeniseiskiy, after which an ambulance arrived for Malikov.

Like Victor, Vyacheslav turned out to be too difficult a patient for the village hospital. On May 17, a board with resuscitation equipment and a brigade from Krasnoyarsk was sent for him, but due to bad weather conditions, the helicopter had to return. Vyacheslav was taken to the regional hospital the next day. There, doctors told the family that Malikov's lungs were almost completely affected. Before he was introduced into an artificial coma, he managed to call Tatiana.

“Next to me in this recreation center were young guys, 30-40 years old, and they have small children,” he said. - Tanya, they were suffocating in front of my eyes, and no one helped them. And why did they take me alone in the ambulance? You could have taken someone else”.

On May 25, Vyacheslav Malikov died. A few days later, the head physician of the regional hospital, Yegor Korchagin, wrote on Facebook that he sympathized with the Malikov family, and noted that the doctors tried to do everything they could. The hospital learned about the outbreak at the Polyus on May 8, when its scale was not yet clear.

“This GOK is two hours away from Severo-Yeniseisk, the wilderness is complete, the medical infrastructure is designed only for the current maintenance of the enterprise,” wrote Korchagin. - We have refurbished the premises of the club and the gym, at least to some extent suitable buildings, began to survey. After the first batches of tests, it became clear that the outbreak was serious, during the next days doctors arrived there. Now, according to him, more than a hundred medical personnel work there.

Polyus told Snob that Malikov and Seredny were taken to medical institutions promptly, without specifying the time frame and what condition they were in at that moment.

“Polyus expresses its deep condolences to relatives and relatives in connection with the death of two employees of the company from among the employees of the Olympiada GOK,” the company said in response to a request from the editors, “the company will provide comprehensive support to the families of employees. The health and safety of employees is a key priority, which is why Polyus has organized a comprehensive testing of all employees of the company, as well as contractors and subsidiaries. On the territory of the Olympiadinsky GOK, the forces of the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the company organized a temporary observation camp and a mobile hospital. In addition to helping those who are sick, the main efforts now are aimed at preventing the infection from spreading further. This also involves isolating workers who test positive. The deployment of a tent camp by the Russian Ministry of Defense, as well as the organization of special quarantine zones in other premises (hostels, a sports club, and others) make it possible to distribute flows in such a way as to exclude contact of sick people with healthy workers, including those who come to watch. The company used the tent camp as a shunting housing stock for resettlement and disinfection of premises in dormitories.

Also, the company has introduced a glove-mask regime and measures for social distancing, daily pre-shift medical examinations and thermometry are carried out, all premises are regularly disinfected."

In his address, Governor Alexander Uss also said that the regional government has been taking "rather serious measures" within three weeks to bring the outbreak under control at the field.

“Today the situation is as follows: about 200 patients were discharged, about 250 people were evacuated by sanitary aviation to medical institutions of the region. Now there are conditions for high-quality sorting, and we proceed from the fact that by Monday we can talk about positive scenarios. Apparently, the number of infected people will not increase significantly. Today their number reaches about 1400 people, although it must be said that most of them are asymptomatic patients. There are still several dozen employees with severe forms of the disease”.

The workers who still remain at the field note that after the cases with Sredny and Malikov there are more medical workers, they are more attentive to the sick, and people in serious condition were indeed immediately evacuated. However, according to them, not all problems have been resolved: shift workers with coronavirus can work for weeks without knowing their diagnosis due to incorrect test results and due to the fact that not everyone does them, and avoid crowds of people at work and in the cafeteria. does not work. Workers do not believe the outbreak will be dealt with anytime soon.

The paramedics laughed and advised to lie down

Other settlements of shift workers in Russia have also become hotbeds of the coronavirus.

One of the largest outbreaks of the virus was recorded at the Chayandinskoye field in Yakutia, where 34 shift camps of various Gazprom contractors are located. From this field, fuel is supplied to China via the Power of Siberia gas pipeline.

At the end of April, workers at the mine staged a rally. They complained about the lack of security measures and joint isolation with COVID-19 patients, and also demanded to organize their removal. Later, they blocked the main road that connects all the villages. A few days later, in Omsk, the relatives of the shift workers picketed the building of the local administration, and an appeal from the workers appeared on the network. The text says that "people, not knowing the results, do not understand whether they are being kept together with the sick or not." After that, the shift workers were gradually taken out to the regions from which they came to work. On June 1, the quarantine at the field was lifted - the governor of Yakutia, Aisen Nikolaev, said that there were practically no patients there.

“In total, more than 10 thousand shift workers lived at the Chayandinskoye field in 34 shift camps, and it was necessary to take out about 8 thousand people,” Aisen Nikolaev told Snob. - In a short time, we developed and agreed on an action plan to prevent the spread of coronavirus infection at the Chayandinsky oil and gas condensate field.(…) Now about 2, 5 thousand shift workers employed in operation remain in place. The production process is carried out as usual. (…) The illness of workers at the Chayandinskoye field has given all parties a wealth of experience, which, I am sure, will allow us to prevent large-scale contamination in the future. Despite the fact that the quarantine regime has been completely lifted, control over the epidemiological situation will remain."

Workers' rallies were also held in the village of Sabetta on Yamal, where the largest Russian liquefied natural gas plant Yamal LNG is being built. Contractors of the Novatek gas company work at the facility. The demands of the demonstrating shift workers were the same as in Yakutia.

At the same time, a petition of workers from another Novatek facility - the village of Belokamenka in the Murmansk Region, where the Center for Large-Capacity Marine Structures (TsKTMS) is being built, appeared on the network. Its author, Tatyana Railean, urged to vote for the removal from the construction site of those who have not yet fallen ill. After hanging for three days, the petition collected 42 signatures and then was closed. In her update to the petition, Railean explained that "there is little chance of success, and there are many chances of losing a job."

Yuri, a 51-year-old worker from Belokamenka, tried to quit when he learned of the outbreak at a construction site, but his boss refused to sign his statement. In early May, Yuri went to work with a fever - according to him, he was refused a coronavirus test, explaining that he was not in a serious condition. Three other people live with him in the room, and only one of his neighbors has not complained of coughing and high fever in the past two weeks. On May 27, Yuri received the first test, which turned out to be negative.

“I worked with the temperature for a week, then came to the first-aid post and said that I probably had a coronavirus. The paramedics laughed and advised to lie down, - says Yuri. - They refused to give me sick leave. I went to work, for three more days, then there was no strength at all, I returned to them, and even then I was prescribed antibiotics. I lay in the hostel for another six days, gradually it became easier, and I went back to work. And the youth with us endured everything on their feet - no one wanted to take sick leave, they pay a penny for it. Contactees, sick, healthy - all live together. Somewhere at the end of April, the authorities collected the names and contacts of our relatives: I think these are “death slips” in case they would carry us forward with our feet. The workers were outraged, they walked in large groups, but the meeting did not come to a conclusion. Our head of the site, apparently, got scared and went to the observatory to run home."

After the quarantine, Yuri wants to quit his job and find another watch. “Because you can't do that to people,” he explains his decision.

On May 29, the regional headquarters for combating COVID-19 in the Murmansk region said that Belokamenka has ceased to be a hotbed of coronavirus - only one case of the disease has been registered there over the past day.

The machinist Vitaly from Sabetta says that at a construction site in the Murmansk region, many shift workers also worked with ARVI symptoms: “It is not profitable for people to say that they are sick. At first, many do not apply. Not all contractors have a normal sick leave: some are paid only for half a shift, some are paid nothing at all. If it's very hard, then they go to the doctors. But absolutely everyone wants to make more money: families at home, work is bad, it is not clear what will happen next and where they will be sent if they find a coronavirus. Who wants to go on watch in vain to stay in quarantine?"

Novatek told Snob that the situation in both villages was stabilized. According to the press service, more than 30 contractors are employed at construction sites in Belokamenka and Sabetta, which "strictly follow the recommendations and instructions of Rospotrebnadzor and local authorities to prevent the spread of coronavirus infection." The company did not comment on the information on the salaries of its employees.

I would like all men to return home to their families

Workers who are taken away from construction sites and fields where outbreaks of coronavirus have been recorded are placed for 14 days in observatories in those regions from where they came to watch. The most famous among the shift workers was the Green Cape sanatorium near Tomsk, which the media began to call the “concentration camp”. In May, two shift workers from the Chayandinskoye field died there. The official cause of death for both is heart problems.

One of the deceased is the 44-year-old installer Aleksey Vorontsov. On May 7, he left Yakutia for Tomsk along with other shift workers. Before that, he was given a certificate of negative test results for coronavirus. On May 13, he complained to his family about pain in his heart. Before that, he had no cardiac problems.

Aleksey did not know if there were doctors at the observatory, since the shift workers were locked in a room with a key, says his son Nikita Vorontsov. Roommates called an ambulance, but the man could not be saved. The death documents say that Alexei died on May 13 at 14:40 from a heart attack. At the same time, the relatives claim that they found a cardiogram in his passport, made on the same day at 15:00.

Nikita Vorontsov believes that his father died because he was nervous: first because of an outbreak at the field, then because of a disrupted flight home. Alexei was supposed to return to Tomsk earlier, but the shift workers from the region were struck off the list for departure, and they had to wait for the next plane. He, too, almost broke down, because, as Alexei told his family, before departure, tests of 100 passengers showed a positive result. At the observatory, Vorontsov was worried about being locked in a room; in addition, none of the shift workers was sure that they were not really infected with the coronavirus, Nikita notes.

“Dad just wanted to go home,” he says. - We waited for him for three months with the whole family, in the end he never came. We talk about our situation to deputies, journalists, write in social networks, because we want there to be no such indifference to the shift workers, so that there are people who were with him and that they tell how everything really happened. Only we ourselves, ordinary people, can help ourselves. I would like all the men who stayed on watch and in the observers to return home to their families."