Energy crisis in Moscow kills 700,000 chickens

The stench near the burial ground is awful indeed; flies are swarming above piles of dead chickens

About 700,000 chickens died at a poultry farm in the Moscow region as a result of the recent blackout in Russia's capital. “The chickens died because of no ventilation, increased temperatures and broken water supplies,” a spokesman for the factory said.

”When the electricity went out at the farm, the temperatures in incubators dropped suddenly, killing all baby birds. That was the real trouble for us,” employees of the poultry farm say.

A huge amount of dead chickens have been hastily buried not very far from the farm. Residents of a neighboring village were extremely concerned with the news that they unwillingly started living on a hen cemetery. “This is such a distress. They made a gigantic graveyard of birds just 50 meters far from our village! We are on the brink of an ecological disaster,” locals say. “Do you smell the stench? We will have to wear gasmasks now. To make the matters worse, there are water wells very close to the new graveyard,” a woman said.

The stench near the burial ground is awful indeed. Flies are swarming above piles of dead chickens, the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper wrote. “The authorities do not want to talk to us. When an excavator appeared in the field and started digging a trench, we wondered what the trench would be used for. They told us that it was a preparation for a new construction area. After that they started bringing tons of dead chickens to the site. There were about forty trucks of dead birds, and all of them went into that big pit. We do not know how to save ourselves from the horrible smell,” a local resident said.

The people also said that dead birds started exploding a day later. “Specialists said that such a mass of dead chickens emitted a lot of gas. Excavators had to cover them up with ground again. There is a lake near the village. The lake is linked with the Moskva River. If ptomaine finds itself in the ground waters, it will lead to an ecological disaster,” locals said.

The Moskva River also suffered from the Moscow blackout. Russia's Surgeon General, Gennady Onishchenko, said that bathing in the waters of the Moskva River was strictly prohibited both in and out of the city. Over 150,000 cubic meters of sewage from city's waste disposal plants has been discharged in the river as a result of the energy crisis, Newsru said.

Photos by Vesti.ru