Russia’s government has declared flooding in the Orenburg region a federal emergency, state media has reported.
The floods, caused by rising water levels in the Ural River, forced more than 4,000 people, including 885 children, to evacuate, the regional government said. The state news agency Tass said that a further 2,000 homes were flooded, bringing the total to nearly 6,300 in the region.
Russia’s emergency situations minister, Alexander Kurenkov, arrived in Orsk – one of the hardest-hit cities – on Sunday to supervise rescue operations.
“I propose classifying the situation in the Orenburg region as a federal emergency and establishing a federal level of response,” the minister said, according to RIA Novosti, a state news agency.
Orsk, which is about 12 miles (20km) north of the border with Kazakhstan, suffered the brunt of the floods which caused a dam to break on Friday, according to its mayor, Vasily Kozupitsa. By Sunday morning, 4,500 residential buildings in the city of more than 200,000 people were flooded and evacuation efforts were continuing, Tass said.
A criminal investigation has been launched into suspected construction violations that may have caused the dam to break. Local authorities said the dam could withstand water levels up to 5.5 metres (18ft). On Saturday morning, the water level reached about 9.3 metres (30.5 feet), Kozupitsa said. On Sunday, the level in Orsk reached 9.7 meters (31.8ft), according to Russia’s water level information site AllRivers.
Authorities in Orsk reported that four people had died, but said their deaths were unrelated to the flooding.
On Sunday, officials in the regional capital, also called Orenburg, about 150 miles from Orsk, wrote on Telegram that the situation in the city was getting worse, as water levels rose by 28cm (11in) from the previous day. More than 1,300 homes flooded and 428 people were evacuated, they said.
Footage from Orsk and Orenburg showed water covering the streets, dotted with one-story houses.
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The Ural River is 1,509 miles long and flows from the southern section of the Ural mountains into the north end of the Caspian Sea, through Russia and Kazakhstan.