2024-04-07 08:06:28
About 2,000 people were evacuated from their homes in the Russian city of Orsk a day after the Ural River rose, flooding riverside villages and causing a dam to break, Russian authorities said, cited by Reuters and BTA.
Videos released by the Ministry of Emergencies showed rescuers helping residents wearing life jackets into lifeboats.
Yesterday, the local authorities in the Orenburg Region, located in the Ural Mountains region, which includes Orsk, called on the residents of the riverside villages to evacuate after the dam wall broke.
News agencies quoted the local prosecutor’s office as saying that the reservoir’s dam failed due to poor maintenance.
A number of Russian regions in Siberia and the Urals and border areas in neighboring Kazakhstan have been flooded in recent days.
Kazakh President Kassam-Jomart Tokayev said the flooding could be the biggest natural disaster in terms of scale and impact in his country in 80 years.
“We must learn the lessons of these large-scale floods,” he stressed.