Environment Minister: satellite images confirm "no development of any type of natural processes" before disaster in Shovi
Georgian Environment Minister Otar Shamugia said high-quality satellite images taken on August 3 confirmed there had been "no development of any type of natural processes" before the disaster. Photo: Ministry of Environmental Protection
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Georgian Environment Minister Otar Shamugia on Wednesday said high-quality satellite images taken on August 3, before the landslide hit the resort of Shovi in the western Georgian region of Racha, confirmed findings in the initial report of the National Environment Agency that said there had been "no development of any type of natural processes" before the disaster.
Shamugia said one of the images confirmed the landslide had started with a rock avalanche, before portions of a nearby glacier broke off and exacerbated the outcomes of the phenomenon that killed 21 people in the resort.
We heard [claims in media] for several days that water was accumulating for two days there, which is not true”, the Minister said.
Preliminary findings published by the National Environmental Agency this week said the disaster in Shovi was unpredictable and caused by intense melting of glaciers, collapse of rock formations in their headwaters, heavy rains, erosive processes and a glacier runoff.
The report said heavy debris, gaining in mass and force, must have reached and covered the resort site, the "Cottage District, in about eight to 10 minutes.
More than 90 units of heavy equipment are involved in search and rescue works in nine locations of the western Georgian region of Racha following the landslide that killed 21 in the Shovi resort last week, the Infrastructure Ministry said on Wednesday.
Vasil Gedevanishvili, the Head of Georgia’s National Environmental Agency, on Tuesday said data obtained from 20 measuring stations operating in the Racha-Lechkhumi region in the country’s west “did not provide a basis” for predicting the landslide that hit the Shovi resort and left 19 people dead on August 3.
Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Tuesday rejected claims of delays in arrival of rescue helicopters at the scene of last week’s landslide in the western resort of Shovi that killed 19 people.
The landslide in the western Georgian municipality of Oni that killed at least 18 people in the Shovi resort on August 3 was caused by intense melting of glaciers, collapse of rock formations in their headwaters, heavy rains, erosive processes and a glacier runoff, a preliminary report by the National Environmental Agency said on Monday.
Nino Tandilashvili, the Deputy Environment Minister, on Wednesday said it was “practically impossible” to forecast the development of “such a complex” natural disaster - a landslide that hit the resort of Shovi in the western Georgian region of Racha on August 3.
Teimuraz Mgebrishvili, the head of the Emergency Management Service of Georgia, on Thursday said the Government had used “all resources available” and ensured “far more than reasonable effort” to respond to the landslide in the country’s western Shovi resort last week that killed 21 people.
Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Thursday said the demand by a part of the domestic opposition to set up a Parliamentary investigative commission into last week’s landslide disaster in western Georgia’s Shovi resort was an “attempt to create more political hysteria”.
Rescuers have recovered the body of the 22nd victim of the Shovi resort landslide in Georgia’s west, Teimuraz Mgebrishvili, the head of the Georgian Emergency Management Service, said on Friday, with at least 11 people still missing.
Georgian Interior Minister Vakhtang Gomelauri on Monday rejected claims by the domestic opposition on “delayed and ineffective” response to the landslide that killed 24 in the western resort location of Shovi on August 3 and said “all survivors” had received necessary help in the aftermath of the disaster.