Floods hit parts of Russia’s Ural
Water levels in rivers in swathes of Russia’s Ural and southwestern Siberian regions continued to rise rapidly, officials said yesterday, flooding hundreds of houses, cutting off power and forcing urgent evacuations of residents.
More than 300 houses and nearly 700 residential plots have been flooded in Russia’s Kurgan region straddling the Tobol River near the border with Kazakhstan, Russia’s Emergency Ministry said yesterday.
“The water level in the Tobol River is rising rapidly,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.
In the city of Kurgan, the region’s administrative centre, power was cut off, affecting about 1,500 residents, local officials said on Monday.
Vadim Shumkov, governor of the Kurgan region, had said he expected a “very difficult” situation, with the waters in the Tobol rising possibly up to 11m, or nearly double the bursting level at some places.
Residents of Ishim, a town of 65,000 people in the Tyumen region in southwestern Siberia, bordering Kazakhstan, were asked early on Tuesday evacuate because of a critical rise in the water level in the Ishim River that flows through the town.
On Monday, the region’s governor warned that the waters in the region’s rivers could reach alltime highs in the coming days.
Russia’s southern Ural region, southwest Siberia and northern Kazakhstan have been grappling with the worst flooding in living memory after large snow falls melted swiftly amid heavy rain over land already waterlogged before winter.
By late Monday, melt waters that swelled the tributaries of the world’s seventh longest river system, had forcing more than 125,000 people to flee their homes.