MOSCOW -- More than six thousand people in the Siberian cities of Novosibirsk, Irkutsk and Poligus were left without heating in temperatures as low as -57 Celsius Monday following failures in power supply systems, Russian media reported.Such cold waves are rare in Siberia, coming only every 10 to 15 years.
Around 2,000 inhabitants of a military cantonment in Novosibirsk found themselves in the cold following a break in gas supplies, many of them opting to transfer temporarily to the homes of relatives in neighbouring districts, the RIA-Novosti agency said.
Others who chose to remain in their homes were warmed by stoves brought out of army warehouses.
A failure elsewhere in the city left 27 blocks of flats and a hospital without heating for several hours.
In Irkutsk, gas supplies to homes broke down several times, leaving families shivering while gas-flows were transferred along alternative routes.
At Poligus, where the mercury plunged to minus 57, a breakdown in the water-heating system forced residents to resort to emergency stoves for several hours while a boiler-house was repaired.
More than 750 residents were forced to evacuate their homes.
Last week, thousands of homes in Russia's Far East were also left without heat as temperatures fell in some areas to minus 30 degrees Celsius in the harshest winter conditions in a decade.
The region would have survived the winter without problems if power plants had taken the necessary precautions and, in particular, built up their coal reserves ahead of the big freeze, officials said.