vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #164 / Social life / Reading article...

An Alaskan company has helped build the first American-type school in Sakhalin Oblast on Iturup, one of the Kuril Islands.

Some 350 children will attend the new two-story school starting in early April. Besides the modern comfortable classrooms and other facilities, the school was designed following requirements of the severe island conditions.

The Alaskan company Arctic Towns and Equipment participated in the $3.5 million project after signing a contract with the Sakhalin Management Office as a part of a federal program to develop the Kuril Islands.

Yevgeny Rybakov, the office’s executive director, said that the company, headed by Carrie Purcell, already had experience in working in the Kuril area.

“She built a town in the Okruzhnoye deposit, where the Petrosakh joint-stock company is extracting and processing oil,” he said.

Another contractor was the joint-stock company Hydrostroi, the biggest enterprise in Kurilsk. It built the school’s engineering network, dug the hole for the basement and prepared the ground for construction.

All the work was done by Russian crews. The Alaskan firm trained them in American construction methods, which differ from Russian techniques. Arctic Towns and Equipment created a small village next to the construction site, and Russian workers were impressed with how thoroughly Americans equipped even a temporary living place, Rybakov said.

The heating, air conditioning, fire protection and other systems made the school disaster-resistant. Although the school is hooked to the central electricity line, it has two diesel generators that will let it function when the central line is off. A separate boiler house will keep it warm.

Late in March, Vladimir Kuramin, the head of the Federal Committee for Northern Territories, visited Sakhalin. Together with Sakhalin Oblast Gov. Igor Farkhutdinov, he participated in the school’s opening.

“It is the best school in the oblast,” Kuramin ssaid.