30,000 People Evacuated in Far East Russia Floods

Dam collapse in flood-hit eastern Russia forces hundreds more evacuations

Some 300 houses were inundated after floodwaters destroyed a dam in the Mendeleyev settlement, a suburb of the Far Eastern Russian city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, officials said.

“The dam was destroyed at about 11:00 local time [midnight GMT] on Saturday. A powerful stream of water is coming. All children were evacuated immediately, adults are being evacuated now,” said a senior Russian official.

Statistics for Flooded Areas in Far East Russia. Data: Emergencies Ministry – gis.waterinfo.ru – Via RiaNovosti. Compiled by FIRE-EARTH.

The settlement is home to 4,500 people, however only about a thousand residents are in the immediate danger, of whom 700 have been evacuated, said a local official.

The authorities have evacuated a total of more than 16,000 people

Severe flooding in the Amur River has affected 100,000 people in Far Eastern regions, forcing the authorities to evacuate a total of about  30,000 people since late July.

The government declared a state of emergency in August, and some 45,000 people were mobilized for the rescue work in flood-hit areas, said the report.

The devastating floods are the worst in the 120-year history of meteorological records in the region, officials said.

Related Links

• State Of Emergency Declared for East Russia, Thousands Evacuated  August 8, 2013

Floods Threaten Thousands of Towns in Russia

Major flooding expected across Russia

More than 4,700 towns across Russia are threatened by floods, especially in Yakutia, the Maritime, Khabarovsk and Krasnoyarsk Territories, and the Irkutsk region in Siberia, said a report.

“The risk zone includes some 1,900 highway sections, 378 railroad sections and 563 bridges.”

In the past two weeks tens of thousands of homes have been deluged in southern and central Russia affecting tens of thousands of residents; many people have been evacuated.

The worst-hit areas are in “the Republic of Tatarstan, and Saratov and Samara regions, as well as in parts of the Central and Volga Federal Districts, where 45 bridges, two dams and two sections of highways have been flooded.”

In the latest incident, the 803-year-old Kadom village was inundated by floowaters, according to Ryazan’s regional emergencies ministry.

“More than 500 homes have been flooded in the central Russian region of Ryazan after melting snow caused the river Moksha to overflow,” affecting  about 1,200 people.

A state of emergency was earlier declared as floodwaters continued rising in the region, reports said.

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