Mill closure threatens Russian town
A view of a village along railroad tracks on the shore of Lake Baikal near the town of Baikalsk. The global financial meltdown threatens to drive the lonesome town of Baikalsk, which also clings to the lakeshore in the great wastes of Siberia, into extinction. (Sergei L. Loiko / Los Angeles Times)
Svetlana Brovkin and her husband, Alexander, who have been laid off by the pulp mill in Baikalsk, check their store of fruit and vegetable preserves in the basement of their home there. (Sergei L. Loiko / Los Angeles Times)
A woman sells fresh grayling in the center of Baikalsk. Her husband was recently laid off with about 1,400 other workers at the Baikalsk Pulp & Paper Mill, which stopped production at the end of September. (Sergei L. Loiko / Los Angeles Times)
Vladimir Yerkhov, 62, a former pulp mill worker, is on pension now. He is fishing in Lake Baikal and says many more men will have to join him fishing now that they too have been laid off. “How else can you survive in winter down here?” he says. “Only by fishing.” (Sergei L. Loiko / Los Angeles Times)
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Baikalsk Pulp & Paper Mill, seen here, stopped production at the end of September. Its heating plant continues to operate to supply the town of Baikalsk with heat. (Sergei L. Loiko / Los Angeles Times)
