Russia Kazakhstan Floods: Flooding Submerges Orenburg Houses

The Russian city of Orenburg is grappling with severe floods, with water levels reaching two meters above critical, submerging houses and leaving only rooftops visible. 

The mayor has advised numerous residents to evacuate as sirens blare across the city. Flood levels are anticipated to crest on Friday, but neighboring regions are bracing for further inundation in the days and weeks ahead. 

Kazakhstan is also reeling from the crisis, with 100,000 individuals displaced from their homes in the past week. This flooding event is being characterized as the most severe in the region in eight decades.

Last week, multiple rivers, including the Ural, Europe's third-largest, overflowed their banks due to high seasonal temperatures causing rapid snow and ice melt, along with heavy rains. 

The Ural river in Orenburg reached 11.43m (37ft) on Friday, leading to the evacuation of over 10,000 people and flooding 11,700 homes. Mayor Sergei Salmin urgently urged further evacuations in certain districts, stressing the critical nature of the situation and advising residents not to delay in leaving their homes. He clarified on his Telegram channel that the sirens heard were not part of an exercise.

The city has a population of half a million and is about 1,500km (930 miles) south-east of Moscow.

Local resident Anna Borodina, said her family had been living in their current property for less than a year.

"Yesterday they turned off all communications, there were sirens and we had to evacuate. Our house is flooded and we can't live here. We're looking for somewhere to stay," she said.

Yulia Babenko, who runs an animal shelter in Orenburg, said many owners did not know what to do with their pets.

"We really have a lot of animals here that had owners, not just street animals," she told Reuters.

"Owners also have no place to take their pets to, nothing is organised. So we are forced to organise everything ourselves. It's almost like Noah's Ark here."

Water levels have fallen in Orsk, further east and upstream of Orenburg. Orsk was badly affected last weekend after a dam burst and saw rare public protests against low compensation offers and perceived failures by local authorities to save the dam.

From Orenburg the Ural flows through northwest Kazakhstan and into the Caspian Sea.

The Ishim and Tobol rivers are also reaching dangerous levels, and are only predicted to peak around 23-24 April.

Floodwaters are threatening a whole swathe of northern Kazakhstan and many dams and reservoirs there are filled to capacity.