The government of the Far Eastern Kamchatka region has dispatched a ship with more than 100 tons of food to a remote district to prevent possible shortages after a boat with an earlier shipment capsized.
The cargo of the Vasily Zavoiko ship, which set sail for the remote Penzhinsky district on Wednesday, includes 33 tons of flour, which will allow local villages to bake enough bread for a whole year, Kamchatka's Deputy Governor Dmitry Latyshev said in a statement released by his administration.
A previous ship, which was also trying to deliver 30 tons of flour to the district, capsized in the Okhotsk Sea late last month, stoking fears of food shortages, the statement said. None of the people aboard were injured, the statement added.
The Vasily Zavoiko is the region's only ship that can sail during powerful autumn storms, a deputy chief of the local government, Sergei Khabarov, was quoted as saying. Local rivers will soon be covered with ice, further complicating navigation, he said.
It will take the Vasily Zavoiko about a week to reach its destination, according to the statement.