7,700 Evacuated in Russia's Orenburg Region Due to Floods

On Wednesday, Denis Pasler, the governor of the Orenburg region, announced that over 7,700 people have been evacuated due to the floods ravaging areas bordering Kazakhstan.

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Currently, 1,500 people are in shelters. At least 12,817 residential buildings in 79 cities have been flooded. The most severe situation is observed in the city of Orsk, where the rising Ural River submerged 6,793 homes.

Due to the natural disaster, a total of 38 bridges in the region's road network cannot be used, which was declared in a state of emergency a week ago.

On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kazakhstani President Kasim-Yomart Tokayev agreed to intensify bilateral cooperation to address floods affecting border regions.

Putin ordered the creation of a special commission to minimize the aftermath of river floods in the regions of Orenburg, Tyumen, Kurgan, and Chelyabinsk.

Meanwhile, Tokayev described the floods of recent weeks as the worst natural disaster experienced by the Central Asian republic in 80 years.

The emergency was declared in the Orenburg region at the end of last week after a dam on that river broke, leading to the flooding of over 10,000 homes, most of them in Orsk, a city of nearly 200,000 inhabitants.

Local authorities acknowledge that the dam, inaugurated in 2014, was built to withstand water levels of 5.5 meters and not to contain 10 meters as currently recorded.

The Russian Investigative Committee initiated two criminal cases for violation of safety rules and negligence following the disaster that has already affected tens of thousands of Russians in the border regions with Kazakhstan.