More than 300 homes were flooded in the Russian city of Orenburg after the Ural River rose half a meter beyond its breaking point, authorities said on Wednesday, while rapid melting snow from the Ural Mountains triggered the worst flooding in decades.
The deluge of meltwater inundated parts of the Ural Mountains, western Siberia and areas of Kazakhstan near rivers such as the Ural and Tobol, prompting orders to evacuate more than 100,000 people on Wednesday night.
Authorities said the situation was dangerous in Orenburg, where water levels in the Ural River, Europe's third longest, rose 50 centimeters on Wednesday morning, just hours after reaching the critical level of 9.3 meters in late Tuesday afternoon.
“The night was eventful,” state news agency RIA said, citing Orenburg’s first deputy mayor, Alexei Kudinov.
State news agency TASS reported that nearly 8,000 people were evacuated from Orenburg due to the floods.
Hydrologists say the worst is yet to come for Orenburg, a city of about 550,000 people. The waters of the Ural River, which runs through Russia and Kazakhstan to the Caspian, could rise another 70 cm by Thursday (11).
The Ural River broke through a dam embankment in the city of Orsk in the Orenburg region, of which Orenburg is the administrative center, over the weekend.
In Kurgan, a town on the Tobol River in the southern Urals, sirens warned people to evacuate immediately. Regional authorities said flooding would continue to rise for three days and predicted a “difficult situation” until the end of April.
On Wednesday, local authorities said they closed traffic on several roads in the region to quickly provide soil to reinforce a dam, as forecast flooding worsened and water levels in the Tobol River quickly rose 23 centimeters.
(With information from Lidia Kelly, in Lisbon)
Source: CNN Brasil
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