Journal Gazette from Mattoon, Illinois • Page 19

Thursday, Februry 9, 1978 Mattoon(n.) Journal Gazette 19 Wom)(oi fmfo In (si S3iSDib(iirDini life building are two waist-high barbed-wire fences. Another five yards away is a shoulder-high wood fence. Five yards from that is another barbed wire fence of about seven feet, then a few yards of ground and a second barbed wire fence. All of those fences are surrounded by a high wooden fence with a guard tower and armed guards. The newspaper editor said there was no prison in town and said that as far as he knew, the area was for the construction of a new food processing plant.

He claimed he didn't know the fences were even there. That led one of the Soviet guides to quip: "Do you think he would have allowed your bus to pass this area if he knew it was there?" The reporters speculated it could be a project where prisoners were working, or that the authorities were so worried about vandalism that they took extreme measures to secure the area. The bus did not go past the area as the newsmen left town. The newspaper editor said that the most pressing social problem for the growing town was housing, followed by cultural centers and "boarding houses" actually small medical centers. He said there was no prostitution and no drug ad-dicition in Surgut although it was pointed out later that there seemed to be no shortage of women in the bars and on the street late at night.

All of the officials seemed to feel that many of Surgut's difficulties would disappear once the housing problem was solved, claiming that would allow more families to move in and perhaps give the region' a more permanent and stable population base. Soviet officials said during the tour there was no problem getting oil workers to come to Siberia, claiming there was only a shortage of housing. According to other regional officials who talked with reporters, the bousing problem is severe. And Kiselev said it is hard to replace oil workers because they must be trained. "Some leave for family reasons and the climate doesn't agree with others," he said.

"Of course, there are the weaklings, too." He seemed comfortable with his life in Siberia even though a meat shortage has restricted most of the workers to canned supplies. The Siberian oil field workers of the Soviet Union are considered heroes there are about 100,000 in the region. The population of Surgut itself is 81,000, according to Vladimir Kiselev, no relation to the foreman, who edits "The Road to the Victory of Communism" Surgut's newspaper. "The town grew by 5,000 or 6,000 annually in the last five years," the editor said. "We expect the population increase to reach 10,000 a year over the next three years." By 1980, he said, Surgut should have a population of 120,000 people with a general plan for a town of 340,000 by the end of the century.

A look at Surgut shows that it is suffering from severe growing pains, the same way any boom town would. There is a drinking problem which has led to petty crime and fights hooliganism as such incidents are called irMhe Soviet Union. It is difficult to get construction workers to come to the region and as a result, Surgut is a curious mix of ancient wooden houses and modernstyle SURGUT, Western Siberia, U.S.S.R. (UPI1 Alexander V. Klselev came to this boom town In the Icy Tyumen region of Western Siberia 12 years ago.

In that time, he has become wealthy by Soviet standards and has climbed to the job of foreman of an oil crew in the Fedorovskoya field about 45 miles north of Surgut. For that, the 35-year-old worker can thank the bitter Arctic cold, his own initiative and a government that appears willing to do whatever is necessary to pump oil from what should be a wasteland. The Fedorovskoya field is just one of around 50 oil fields that dot the vast western Siberian basin that makes up the Tyumen Oblast, or region. The people who work there are young for the most part, and -show the marks of working in temperatures so cold that a nail dropped on the sharp edge of an axe will shatter. apartment complexes.

Because there is a surplus of money, there are too many automobiles for the hazardous roads that cut through the town. They skid about and skitter on the icy streets. The reporters witnessed several accidents during their two-day visit, including one in which a jeep-style vehicle rolled over after skidding off the highway. Despite the drawbacks and apparent sociological problems, Surgut which in the ancient local dialect means "fishing spot" stands as an impressive sign of the Soviet commitment to settling the region. It has a huge power plant that generates some 10 billion kilowatts of power a year operating on gas piped in from the oil fields.

Its birthrate is far up the scale for the Soviet Union, although the officials said they Kiselev, his wife and two daughters live in a three-room apartment in Surgut, which he rents for $5.20 a month. His salary is about $670 to $704 a month. That is at least three times the amount most Soviet workers make, and it shows both what the country will pay and what the worker will demand for the extraction of oil from the earth beneath the snows of Siberia. Kiselev has been able to save $20,100 during his 12 years in Siberia. He has a car and gets 42 working days of vacation a year ore than enough to head south to bask in the sun by the Black Sea.

He told western reporters touring the region that the weather which drops to as low as minus 58 degrees fahrenheit is the worst part of working in Siberia. He said the "tough ones" get used to it, however. haven't computed an exact figure. And the town itself is loaded with signs that the planners in Moscow hope to follow up on their proposals. There were numerous apartment buildings under construction and the -town's major hotel had what appeared to be an endless supply of fruits, cranberry juice and other foodstuffs that are often hard to get elsewhere in the country.

The streets, hazardous though they may be, are constantly packed with huge trucks. The boom town even had its own traffic jam at a key intersection. It also has its very own mystery, a subject the officials and the newspaper editor claimed to know little about. On a side street on the way to the power station, there is a huge, uncompleted complex of buildings. About 30 yards from the McQuaid to the Homestead Exemption MUST BE RENEWED EVERY YEAR Forms Available At All Banks and Building Loans ELI D.

STORM Coles County Supervisor of Assessments rescue the expressway. McQuaid's two-way radio provided a play-by-play of snow removal and rescue efforts in Revere. An anonymous patrolman announced with a chuckle he had just "commandeered" a front-end loader from a construction company Others told of a man who needed to get to a kidney dialysis machine, several pregnant women who needed to get to hospitals, countless families stranded in their homes by flood waters. At Revere Beach Parkway, McQuaid took the truck down the-path of least resistance, road or no road. In places where it appeared impossible to get through, Delaney or one of the reporters trudged several hundred yards in front of the truck, charting a way through the drifts.

v. N. y. 4" '4 REVERE, Mass. (UPI) "I thought they said this road was plowed," John McQuaid snorted, jamming his police truck into four-wheel drive and roaring into a drift so high it exploded snow straight back over the hood and windshield.

The "road" was the Revere Beach Parkway, a four-lane rush hour racetrack turned into a river of snow. It was supposed to je the best way to get from Boston to Revere, normally a 15-minute ride. Tuesday it took 90 minutes. McQuaid, a Metropolitan District Commission policeman from Ware, who normally patrols the pastoral Quabbin Reservoir 80 miles west of Boston, had been drafted to chauffeur two reporters and Assistant Commissioner William Delaney to Revere. On the return trip, McQuaid was to carry a half-dozen boxes of sandwiches, pickles, soft drinks, a dozen eggs and six cigars back to Boston for the crew at MDC headquarters.

"Have no fear, McQuaid is here," he said, calming no one's fears. He gunned his truck up Beacon Hill and executed a very professional drift racing turn straight into a 5-foot pile of snow, thoughtlessly left by a plow in the middle of the street. "I'm just a country boy. What the hell are you city folks doing leaving snow in the middle of the street?" he asked Delaney, who was looking wistfully at the headquarters building he just left. With coaching from the reporters and navigation Delaney, McQuaid steered the truck onto the Mystic River Bridge over Boston Harbor toward Revere.

The expressway was deserted except for an abandoned snowplow that apparently ran out of gas. The MDC earlier had tried twice to get the reporters into Revere, a disaster area devastated by coastal flooding and drifting snow that defied plowing. Both times, the cars bogged down soon after leaving GENUINE Chicago Cub pitcher Bruce Sutter shows how to throw his famous fork ball with snow balls at Wrigley Field. Sutter was at the stadium helping pack equipment for spring training in Arizona. (UPI wirephotor WHERE EVERY WEEKEND IS A BIG ONE! AND EVERY DAY A DELIGHT i Snow brill? 40 WONDERFUL STORES TO SERVE YOUR EVERY NEED DINNER RINGS Diamonds, Emeralds, Rubies, Sapphires ROUTE 16 EAST -MATTOONJLL.

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