Russia and Kazakhstan have ordered the evacuation of more than 100,000 people as rapidly melting snow has caused the worst flooding in the region in at least 70 years. The deluge of melt water has overwhelmed scores of settlements in the Ural Mountains, Siberia, and areas of Kazakhstan close to rivers such as the Ural and Tobol, which local officials said had risen by meters in a matter of hours to the highest levels ever recorded.
The Ural River, Europe's third-largest, which flows through Russia and Kazakhstan into the Caspian Sea, burst through an embankment dam on Friday, flooding the city of Orsk just south of the Ural Mountains. Downstream, water levels in Orenburg, a city of around 550,000, continue to rise. Sirens in Kurgan, a city on the Tobol River, a tributary of the Irtysh, warned people to evacuate immediately. An emergency was also declared in Tyumen, a major oil-producing region of Western Siberia - the largest hydrocarbon basin in the world.
"The difficult days are still ahead for the Kurgan and Tyumen regions," Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "There is a lot of water coming." President Vladimir Putin spoke to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan, where over 86,000 people have been evacuated due to flooding. Tokayev said the flooding was probably the worst in 80 years.
The most severely hit areas in Kazakhstan are Atyrau, Aktobe, Akmola, Kostanai, Eastern Kazakhstan, Northern Kazakhstan, and Pavlodar regions, most of which border Russia and are crossed by rivers originating in Russia, such as the Ural and the Tobol.
In Russia, anger boiled over in Orsk when at least 100 Russians begged the Kremlin chief to help and chanted "shame on you" at local officials who they said had done too little. The Kremlin said Putin was getting updated constantly on the situation but that he had no immediate plans to visit the flood zone as local and emergency officials were doing their best to cope with the deluge.
Following the protest, Tass reported that the governor of the Orenburg region, Denis Pasler, promised compensation payments of 10,000 rubles a month (approximately $108) for six months to people forced out of their homes by the flood. The total damage from the flood in the region is estimated at about 21 billion rubles ($227 million), according to the regional government.
In Kurgan, a region with around 800,000 residents, drone footage showed traditional Russian wooden houses and the golden domes of Russian Orthodox Churches stranded among a vast expanse of water. In Orenburg, residents paddled along roads as if they were rivers. Dams and embankments were being strengthened as the Ural River rose to nearly 10 meters high.
Russian officials have said some people ignored calls to evacuate. Kurgan Governor Vadim Shumkov urged residents to take the warnings seriously, saying, "It's better that we laugh at the hydrologists together later and praise God for the miracle of our common salvation. But let's do it alive."
Rising water was also forecast in Siberia's Ishim River, also a tributary of the Irtysh, which, along with its parent, the Ob, forms the world's seventh-longest river system. It was not immediately clear why this year's floods were so severe, as the snow melt is an annual event in Russia. Scientists say climate change has made flooding more frequent worldwide.
The floods have forced over 4,000 people, including 885 children, to evacuate in the Orenburg region alone. Footage from Orsk and Orenburg showed water partially submerging buildings, including homes, as well as nearby fields. A criminal probe has been launched to investigate suspected construction violations that may have caused the dam to break in Orsk.
The designation of the situation as a federal emergency reflects the risk of flooding beyond the Orenburg region. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Sunday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had spoken with the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, as well as the heads of the Kurgan and Tyumen regions, located in the Ural Mountains area, to discuss the situation and "the need ... for early adoption of measures to assist people and their possible evacuation."
