In the province of Orenburg in the southern Urals, the Russian authorities declared a "federal emergency state" due to flooding by Ural River floods which caused the collapse of several dam dams in the region.
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The head of Russia’s Emergencies Ministry, Aleksandr Kurenkov, arrived in the disaster area. He said the emergency in the region has been assigned high-priority federal status.
Orenburg Mayor Sergey Salmin has warned that flood waters are continuing to rise in the region. The city of Orsk in the region, which borders Kazakhstan, has been the site of a major disaster over the past few days.
Mayor Salmin said on Sunday that the “flooding situation remains critical.” “The water is rising, and in the coming days its level will keep rising,” he added that there would be further power outages in affected areas and urging people to evacuate immediately.
Over 4,000 local residents have been evacuated, and at least another 3,500 houses elsewhere in Orenburg Region have been affected due the floodings.
Local authorities declared a state of emergency across the region on Friday when the first embankment gave way as the Ural River rose to dangerous levels. Another ruptured the following day in the vicinity of Orsk, with more than 2,500 houses flooded.
Press media Interfax quoted the Orenburg governor’s press office as reporting that since the start of the disaster, four people have been found dead in their homes, altough none of them drowned, and “their deaths have nothing to do with the flooding,” authorities stressed.
The Investigative Committee’s office in Orenburg Region believes that at least one of the incidents was due to negligent maintenance of the infrastructure. On Saturday, the entity launched a criminal probe into a suspected breach of safety regulations during construction, as well as criminal negligence.
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