Russia evacuates around 2,000 people from homes in flood-hit Orsk

MOSCOW: Russia has evacuated around 2,000 people from their homes in the Russian city of Orsk, Russian officials said on Saturday, a day after rising waters in the Ural River flooded riverside villages and caused a dam to burst.

The regional government said the people had been evacuated from the city of 230,000 near Russia’s border with Kazakhstan after thousands of homes were flooded in the area, the TASS news agency reported.

Video footage published by the emergency services ministry showed residents being helped into lifeboats wearing life jackets.

On Friday, local authorities in the Ural mountains’ Orenburg region, where Orsk is located, urged residents of riverside communities to evacuate after the dam burst.

Agencies cited the local prosecutor’s office as saying the dam had been breached due to poor maintenance.

A string of Russian Siberian and Urals mountain provinces and neighbouring parts of Kazakhstan have been inundated by floodwaters in recent days.

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said the flooding may be Kazakhstan’s largest natural disaster in terms of scale and impact for 80 years.

“We must learn all the lessons from these large-scale floods,” he said. Mayor of Russia’s Orenburg orders evacuations amid ‘critical’ flooding.