Moscow City's rescue service marking anniversary since establishment.

MOSCOW, August 3 (Itar-Tass) - Moscow City's rescue services on Monday
mark the 72nd anniversary since their establishment.

August 3, 1937, the authorities set up the city's local antiaircraft
defense department that later turned into the Main Department of the
Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations and Civil Defense in Moscow and
the City Department for Civil Defense.
"The smoothly functioning system of prevention and elimination of
emergencies took root in the years of the first Soviet-era five-year
periods," the press service of the Emergency Situations Ministry's main
department said.
By the beginning of Hitler's aggression against the Soviet Union that
began June 22, 1941, over 100,000 Muscovites had received elementary
training in the units of the antiaircraft defense service.
More than 3,000 bomb shelters was built by the time to protect the
population.
The measures helped incapacitate more than a half of all the
incendiary bombs that the Nazis dropped on this city during the battle for
it /fall 1941 through the early months of 1942/. Members of the voluntary
units eliminated 700 big fires and about 40,000 fire outbreaks.
Also, units of the services cleared away more than a thousand
portfires, thus saving dozens of thousands of lives.
Both departments existing today have a workforce of more than 14,000
people who have at their disposal 930 firefighting machines, seven
helicopters and a number of small-size vessels.
"Almost 4,500 fires were extinguished in Moscow from January through
June this year and 1,425 persons were rescued from them.
"The number of people rescued in Moscow City since the beginning of
the year in the city's rivers and water reservoirs stand at 127, and duty
teams have made about 2,000 attendances to render assistance to people in
emergency situations," a source at the emergency situations department
said.
He called attention to the fact that each such figure contains someone'
s grief and hope for a helping hand at a critical moment.

.Rssn divisions of Toyota, Nissan putting workers on scheduled
vacations.

St PETERSBURG, August 3 (Itar-Tass) - Beginning of August has become
the period of a production lull at automobile factories in St Petersburg.
The Japanese corporations Toyota and Nissan have put their workers on
scheduled vacations, while the personnel of the American giant General
Motors will stay on enforced leaves until the end of the summer.
Spokespeople for Toyota Motor Manufacturing Russia told Itar-Tass the
assembly of cars is suspended from August 3 though August 16 in connection
with a scheduled annual leave, which the plant traditionally organizes in
the first half of August.
The plant's assembly lines will be restarted August 17 and the
enterprise will resume normal operations then.
Nissan has also planned the collective scheduled vacation for the
beginning of August, too, but sources at Nissan Motor Rus could not name
the exact date when the assembling of cars will begin again.
Executives in both corporations say at the same time that the summer
break in car manufacturing is a scheduled one and is not linked in any way
to the knotty economic situation that has halted the international market
of cars.
As for the General Motors workers, their enforced leave has continued
into the second month running. The managers at the enterprise explain for
this decision by saying the corporation is unwilling to step up the
volumes of production at the Russian plant.
They indicate that the workers will return to the workshops September
1 and the management is doing everything in its power to reduce the impact
of slimming production volumes on the workers.
In part, all the workers get two-thirds of their averaged normal wages
during the enforced vacation.
The St Petersburg factories of the three corporations manufacture
Chevrolet Captiva, Opel Antara, Toyota Camry, and Nissan Teana. Another
two brands - Chevrolet Cruise and Nissan X-Trail - will be added to the
product line in September.