Water levels are rising downstream in Orenburg, a city of about 550,000 people.
Russia and Kazakhstan ordered the evacuation of more than 100,000 people as snow melted rapidly, causing rivers to swell, causing the region’s worst flooding in at least 70 years.
Torrents of meltwater inundated dozens of settlements in areas including the Ural Mountains, Siberia and Kazakhstan near the Ural and Tobol rivers, with local officials saying floodwaters rose several meters in a matter of hours to their highest levels on record. .
The Ural River, Europe’s third-largest river that flows through Russia and Kazakhstan into the Caspian Sea, burst its banks on Friday and flooded the city of Orsk, south of the Ural Mountains.
Water levels are rising downstream in Orenburg, a city of about 550,000 people.
An alarm was sounded in Kurgan, a city along the Tobol River, a tributary of the Irtysh River, warning people to evacuate immediately. A state of emergency was also declared in Tyumen, the main oil-producing area in Western Siberia, the world’s largest oil and gas basin.
“Tough days are ahead for the Kurgan and Tyumen regions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “There’s a lot of water coming.”
President Vladimir Putin spoke with President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan, where more than 86,000 people have been evacuated due to flooding. Tokayev said that this flood may be the worst in 80 years.
The worst-affected regions are Atyrau, Aktobe, Akmola, Kostanay, eastern Kazakhstan, northern Kazakhstan and the Pavlodar region, most of which border Russia with the Ural River, the Rivers originating from Russia, such as the Bor River, pass through it.
In Russia, anger boiled over in Orsk, where at least 100 Russians begged Kremlin leaders for help and shouted “Shame on you” at local officials who they said were doing too little.
The Kremlin said Putin was being kept updated on the situation but that he had no immediate plans to visit flooded areas as local and emergency officials did their best to deal with the flooding.
Evacuate immediately
In the Kurgan region, home to some 800,000 residents, drone footage showed traditional Russian wooden houses and the golden kupola of a Russian Orthodox church stranded in a vast body of water.
In Orenburg, a city of more than half a million people, residents paddle along the roads as if they were on a river. Dams and embankments are being strengthened as the Ural River’s water level rises by nearly 10 meters.
Russian officials said some people ignored calls to evacuate. Kurgan Governor Vadim Shumkov urged residents to take the warnings seriously.
“We understand you very well: it is difficult to leave your property and move somewhere at the behest of local authorities,” Shumkov said.
“It is better that we laugh at the hydrologists together later, and praise God for the miracle of our mutual salvation. But let us live.”
In Kurgan, water levels in the Tobol River are rising and Russia says 19,000 people in the area are at risk.
Levels are also expected to rise in Siberia’s Ishim River, which is also a tributary of the Irtysh River, which together with its parent River Ob forms the world’s seventh-longest river system.
It’s unclear why this year’s flooding has been so severe, as snowmelt is an annual event in Russia. Scientists say climate change is causing floods to become more frequent around the world.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
