Russia’s government has declared an emergency in flood-hit areas in the Orenburg region. ‘The floods have been caused by increasing water levels in the Ural River, forcing over 4,000 people, including 885 children, to evacuate’, said the regional government.
As per the media reports, a further 2,000 homes were flooded, bringing the total to nearly 6,300 in the region.
Alexander Kurenkov, Russia’s Emergency Situations Minister arrived in Orsk one of the most hard-hit cities on Sunday to supervise rescue operations.
The minister said, ‘I propose classifying the situation in the Orenburg region as a federal emergency and establishing a federal level of response’.
‘Orsk, less than 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) north of the border with Kazakhstan, suffered the stress of the floods which caused a dam to break on Friday’, according to Orsk mayor Vasily Kozupitsa.
4,500 residential buildings in the city of 200,000 were flooded by Sunday morning and evacuation efforts were still ongoing.
A criminal investigation has been launched to probe suspected construction violations that may have caused the dam to break. Local authorities said
‘The dam could withstand water levels up to 5.5 metres (nearly 18 feet)’, said the local authorities. On Saturday morning, the water level reached about 9.3 metres (30.51 feet) and rising.
According to Russia’s water level information site AllRivers, ‘On Sunday, the level in Orsk reached 9.7 metres (31.82 feet), according to Russia’s water level information site AllRivers’.
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