Cyclone Benedict, which pelted St. Petersburg with snow, showed that the city authorities had not properly prepared for winter. In particular, they did not buy enough special equipment for snow removal.
Forecasts that predicted heavy precipitation came true - up to 15-20 centimeters of snow fell in St. Petersburg on the night of November 29.
And it immediately became clear that the city's utilities were unable to cope with the consequences of the disaster. For the normal functioning of the Northern capital, it was necessary to take out about 10 thousand cubic meters of snow, but due to the lack of snow-removing equipment, only 3.5 thousand cubic meters were taken out.
Earlier, Sergei Malinin, chairman of the improvement committee, and Alexander Beglov, governor of St. Petersburg, said that 2,200 units of specialized equipment had been prepared for snow removal this winter. However, according to some information, its quantity is not more than 1700.
In general, for a full-fledged street cleaning in the fleet of St. Petersburg there must be at least 3,500 snowblowers. Smolny once again turned out to be not ready for winter.