Flood
Russian flood zone: water reaches new high
The floods triggered the evacuation of thousands of people in the Orenburg region, located about 1,200 kilometers southeast of the capital Moscow. photo
© vvsmolnikov/AP/dpa
No relief in the flood-stricken Russian region of Orenburg. Overnight the flood rose to a new historic high and more houses were under water.
In the heavy from In the flood-hit city of Orenburg, the water level of the Ural River rose another nine centimeters overnight to a historic high.
“Early this morning the Urals near Orenburg reached the mark of 11.71 meters,” said Governor Denis Pasler on his Telegram channel on Saturday. According to authorities, a further 800 houses and 1,800 garden plots have been flooded over the last 24 hours. In total, more than 3,000 houses in the city are under water.
According to Pasler, the situation currently remains tense, but it has recently stabilized. The level has not risen in the last four hours. “We expect that this is the plateau: there will be no further increase, the situation will stabilize and then the decline will begin,” he wrote. Thousands of people had to leave their homes because of the flood.
The snowy winter has led to one of the worst floods in decades in the Orenburg region, 1,200 kilometers east of Moscow. Before the regional capital, the large city of Orsk was hit, where large parts of the old town were flooded by the Urals after a dam burst.
The 2,400-kilometer-long river, which geographers define as part of the border between Europe and Asia, drains south through Kazakhstan into the Caspian Sea. There is also a flood alert in Kazakhstan. Around 100,000 people were evacuated there.